
Class __kl lfe LP I 
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CilESRIGUT OICFOSK 



CARLISLE MEMORIAL VOLUME 




DR. J. H. CARLISLE 



CARLISLE 




EDITED BY 

WATSON BOONE DUNCAN 



AUTHOR or 



"Charaeter-Buiiaini." "Our Von?*," 
" Immortality and Mo3em Thought," 
"Studies in Methodist Literature," 
"The More Excellent Was," Eta- 



Printed for the Author 

Publishing House of the M. E. Church, South 

Nashville, Tenn. 

1916 






COPYRIGHT, 1916 

BT 

WATSON BOONE DUNCAN 




FEB -2 i9i7 



CI.A4 5:j886 



'Wu' / \ 



firbiratiott 



TO THE WOFFORD BOYS 

THIS VOLUME IS 
AFFECTIONATELY 
DEDICATED 



CARLISLE 

Just as the sun, behind a western hill, 
Adorns the heavens with its radiant beams, 
Makes them to glow with brilliancy until 
Earth lit up with reHected splendor seems, 
So with this noble man, although he's gone, 

His greatness, shining out through other men, 

Continues ever to go on and on; 

And through the lives of these he lives again. 

Resembling much a wave upon the deep. 

Lashing itself to pieces 'gainst the shore. 

Is broken, but yet not destroyed, and sweeps 

Still back again and onward evermore — 

Like this, he lives forever on until 

Earth to the uttermost parts his life will fill. 

— IV. Grady Hazel. 



CONTENTS. 

Pack. 
Foreword 9 

Chapter I. 
The Carlisle Family ll 

Chapter II. 
Life Sketch of Dr. Carlisle 19 

Chapter III. 
Dr. Carlisle as a Citizen 63 

Chapter IV. 
The Wofford Chapel Hour 89 

Chapter V. 
Wofford College and Its President Twenty Years Ago. ... 97 

Chapter VI. 
Dr. Carlisle as a Teacher m 

Chapter VII. 
Tributes to Dr. Carlisle 131 

(7) 



FOREWORD. 

From the day that Dr. James Henry Carlisle, 
South Carolina's greatest son, passed beyond the 
shadows I have felt that it would be an irreparable 
loss to the citizenship of the nation not to have some 
literary preservation of the story of his inspiring 
life. The good Doctor had expressed the wish that 
no biography of himself be published. This wish 
has been sacredly kept. After much deliberation I 
conceived the plan of this memorial volume, which, 
in a measure at least, preserves the remarkable story 
of Wofford's "beacon light" without violating his 
desire. 

The plan of this volume was submitted to Dr. 
Carlisle's son, Mr. James H. Carlisle, of Spartan- 
burg, S. C, and was heartily indorsed by him. I 
wish to express my thanks to all who have so kindly 
assisted me in the preparation of the material for the 
book. The article by Prof. Robert Law first ap- 
peared in the Alcalde and is used here by permission. 
The tribute by Associate Justice Woods first ap- 
peared in the State. The other tributes are taken 
from the Southern Christian Advocate and the 
Wojford College Journal. 

The preparation of the book has been a work of 

(9) 



10 Carlisle Memorial Volume. 

love ; and I send the volume forth with the earnest 
hope that it will contribute to the perpetuation of the 
influence of the great teacher, the honored citizen, 
and the humble Christian, James Henry Carlisle. 
Very sincerely, Watson Boone Duncan. 

The Parsonage, Manning, S. C, January, 1916. 



CHAPTER I. 
The Carlisle Family. 



CHAPTER I. 
The Carlisle Family. 

ARTICLE FROM THE NEWS AND HERALD, WINNSBORO, N. C, 
APPEARING SATURDAY, DECEMBER l8, I9O9. 

WiNNSBORO has no prouder distinction than that 
of having been the birthplace of Dr. James H. Car- 
lisle, in whose death, at Spartanburg on October 2, 
the State of South Carolina sustained the loss of 
her most distinguished son. Not only was Winns- 
boro his birthplace (the house in which he was born 
is still standing on the lot adjoining the old Method- 
ist church), but in the quiet churchyard hard by lie 
the remains of his parents and grandparents. This 
burial ground of the dead is a very compact plot, 
well crowded and containing in its sacred bosom all 
that is mortal of Hilliard Judge and John R. Pick- 
ett. The former was one of the pioneers of Meth- 
odism in these parts and accomplished a great work, 
though he passed away at the early age of thirty- 
three. The latter was a most influential local 
preacher, a successful man of business, and at his 
death left a considerable estate to Wofford College 
on the death of his wife, who survived him about 
twenty years. A nice shaft marking his last resting 
place was erected to his memory, a place being left 
on the same for an inscription to his wife. Dr. 

(13) 



14 Carlisle Memorial Volume. 

Carlisle interested himself to see that this wish of 
the college's benefactor was carried out. 

As is not infrequently the case, the family plots 
in these churchyards have no well-defined dividing 
line, and there is lacking symmetry of arrangement. 
The Carlisle plot is rather an exception to this rule, 
if taken in its entirety. It occupies a considerable 
space on the eastern side, including the Buchanan 
and Morrison graves. 

Not many days ago we visited this plot for the 
purpose of making a copy of the inscriptions on 
these Carlisle stones, which are the plainest marble 
slabs, let down into the ground without even a base 
to rest upon. Some old cloths that had been carried 
along for the purpose came in most suitably for 
rubbing these stones off so that the inscriptions 
might be read. These are given below, the relation 
to the deceased being expressed in the heading: 

GRANDFATHER. 

In memory of 

James Carlisle, 

WHO DIED September 22d, A.D. 1833, 

IN the 68th year of his age, 

leaving a widow, six sons, and one daughter, 

who have erected this stone as a tribute of 

heart and affection. 

"Why should we mourn for dying friends 
Or shake at death's alarms? 
'Tis BUT the voice that Jesus sends 

To CALL us TO HIS ARMS." 



The Carlisle Family. 15 

GRANDMOTHER. 

Sacred to the memory of 

Mary Carlisle. 

Born May 26, 1769; 

Died April 25, 1847, 

Aged 77 years and ii months. 

FATHER. 

William Carlisle. 

Born in Antrim, Ireland, 

July 26, 1797; 

Died March 28, 1867. 

MOTHER. 
Here rests in hope 

THE BODY of 

A Christian wife and mother, 

Mary Anne Carlisle. 

Born Feb. 16, 1801 ; 

Died June 19, 1858. 

"God bless all my children and help them 
to meet me in the realms of bliss." Amen. 

"Now toil and suffering o'er. 

Go take with saints thy place ! 
But go as all have gone before, 

A SINNER saved BY GRACE." 

By her side lie the remains of her first-bom, 
James Hemy, who died June 13, 1821, aged forty- 
two days. 

After copying these inscriptions, we wrote to 
Prof. W. S. Morrison, of Clemson College, whose 
mother is Dr. Carlisle's sister and who is still living 
at her home near Blackstock. In response to certain 
inquiries therein, he has kindly furnished us with 



i6 Carlisle Memorial Volume. 

some interesting facts about the ancestors of him 
whose death is sorely mourned. These are now 
published probably for the first time. 

The first of these is a letter to Dr. Carlisle's 
grandfather, in Ireland, by Rachel Buchanan. The 
copy furnished us by Professor Morrison is from a 
copy made by Dr. James H. Carlisle at Spartanburg 
May 21, 1906. This copy by Dr. Carlisle bears this 
note at the top : 

Copy of a letter written to my grandfather, who died in 
Ireland in 1813. His three brothers — John, Creighton, and 
Robert — had come to South Carolina. Their mother, Rachel 
(Phillips) Buchanan, is buried in the Presbyterian churchyard 
a few miles west of Winnsboro, S. C. 

Rachel Buchanan's Letter. 

Mr. William Buchanan, 
Near Ballamara. 

. . . much hurt for want of your presence in this coun- 
try; but as you feel disposed to spend your day in your native 
country, I must endeavor to set myself down easy upon the 
subject. A short space of time will finish my course here, 
and I shall go to my long home. My blessings you have. 
Pray for yourself and me, that we may all be happy in the 
world to come, I will remain at your brother Creighton's. 
His son John is now grown to be a fine boy and about a 
month ago was inoculated for the smallpox and is now finally 
recovered. Your sister Mary is also well Your brother 
John and family are well, but much emaciated in consequence 
of his fatigue in the late war, I received your letter by John 
Gray. Am sorry to hear of the loss of your daughter, but 
hope she is happier than with you. Your brother John says 
he will not write to you, as he has given you many long letters 
and has no reply. 

Our last account from Ireland and England is rather 



The Carlisle Family. 17 

alarming. We wish you may not be too premature. Stop 

your proceedings until G. the 3d is underground and then — 
Your friends here all join in their kind wishes for you. 

My blessing and best respects to my daughter Mary (your 

^ife). 

Remember the one thing needful. I remain 

Your affectionate mother, Rachel Buchanan. 

Little River, 14th March, 1793. 

Professor Morrison's Notes. 

The above letter is made much more interesting 
by the following notes from the pen of Professor 
Morrison: 

"Presbyterian church a few miles west of Winnsboro" is 
Jackson Creek Church. 

"Brother Creighton" was Creighton Buchanan, buried in 
Fairfield, grandfather of Mr, R. N. McMaster. 

"His son John" was Gen. John Buchanan, buried in the 
Presbyterian churchyard at Winnsboro, a signer of the Ordi- 
nance of Secession, 

"Brother John" was Capt. John Buchanan, buried in the 
Methodist churchyard at Winnsboro. 

William Buchanan died in Ireland. 

His widow Nancy (nee Ray; "Mary," in an old letter, 
must be a mistake of the typewriter whose copy I have copied, 
as Mrs. Carlisle, her sister, was Mary) and four children 
came to Winnsboro. 

Four children of William Buchanan and his wife Nancy 
were : Mary Ann, who married her first cousin, William Car- 
lisle; John R., buried in the Methodist churchyard at Winns- 
boro; Rachel, who married James McCreight, buried in the 
Presbyterian churchyard at Winnsboro; and Nancy, who 
married John Lewis and moved to Florida. 

From the same authoritative source we have the 
following most interesting 
A 2 



i8 Carlisle Memorial Volume. 

Carlisle Data. 

James Carlisle, a shoemaker, and his wife Mary (nSe 
Ray) came from County Antrim, Ireland, to Fairfield about 
1818. They first settled on Hobble Road Branch, eleven miles 
north of Winnsboro, on the place now owned by Robert Ster- 
ling. From there they moved to Dumper's Creek and lived on 
a place known as the Hindman place, now owned by a negro, 
Wade Jackson, who can point out the house site, two or 
three miles southwest of White Oak. 

James Carlisle and wife are buried in Winnsboro. With 
them came their seven children: (i) James, a weaver, buried 
at Concord Church. (2) William, a carpenter, Dr. James H. 
Carlisle's father, who, with his wife, Mary (nee Ray), and an 
infant child, James Henry, is buried in the Methodist church- 
yard at Winnsboro. (Note that Dr. Carlisle (1825-1909) was 
given exactly the same name as his older brother.) (3) John, 
a shoemaker, father of the late Rev. John M. Carlisle, grand- 
father of Revs. J. E. and M. L. Carlisle, went to Mississippi. 
(4) Alexander, who went to Mississippi, (s) Mary, who 
went to Mississippi and married a Harkey. (6 and 7) Henry 
and Thomas, twins. Thomas went to Mississippi; Henry, a 
soldier in the Seminole War, went to Texas. 

John B. Morrison, Blackstock, has William Carlisle's nat- 
uralization papers, dated November 19, 1824. The oath was 
administered by David Johnston and the paper signed by 
Samuel W. Yongue. Also William Carlisle's license to prac- 
tice medicine under the Thomson Patent; said license, or per- 
mit, being dated June 2, 1832. Also William Carlisle's diploma, 
twenty-seven by twenty-two inches, from the Southern Bo- 
tanico Medical College, Macon, Ga., 1848. 



CHAPTER II. 
Life Sketch of Dr. Carlisle. 



CHAPTER II. 
Life Sketch of Dr. Carlisle. 

BY DR. CHARLES FORSTER SMITH, UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN. 

Belief in dogmas shifts and changes. It has 
been so from the beginning and will be so to the 
end. What is religion in one age may become su- 
perstition in the next or a later age. One thing 
stands through all the ages: the lesson of a life that 
was great because it was noble and sincere and un- 
selfish and unsullied. The argument of such a life 
is incontrovertible, the proof is irrefragable, and the 
influence is irresistible. Good men accept it and are 
glad; bad men stand in awe and silence before it. 
The men who lead such lives are the real saviors of 
their fellows in every age. They are God's witness- 
es to each generation, the best and only adequate 
testimony of the working of God's Spirit in each 
period, and the milestones that mark the moral 
progress of men through time to eternity. They 
keep humanity from going to the dogs. It is not 
always easy to accept or prove, least of all to hold 
fast to, a dogma; but a good man's life is God's 
best proof of himself, if there is any proof. God 
probably has not left himself without such witness 
in any age. Such were Confucius, Buddha, Socra- 
tes and Plato, Vergil, Marcus Aurelius, Dante, St. 

(21) 



22 Carlisle Memorial Volume. 

Francis of Assisi, Luther, Wesley, Dr. Arnold, Em- 
erson, Lincoln, Lee, and Phillips Brooks. Perhaps 
all earnest men have known in life or in literature 
some such man who has been to them a stay and a 
safeguard. To me such a man was Dr. Carlisle, 
the best and most Christlike man I have ever known, 
described in his own words (but not used of him- 
self), "exacting on himself, yet lenient to others; 
pure, yet tolerant." 

James Henry Carlisle was born at Winnsboro, S. 
C, May 24, 1825. His father, Dr. William Car- 
lisle, was a native of Ireland, who came to America 
in 1818 and settled in Winnsboro. He married at 
Winnsboro his first wife, a first cousin, named Mary 
Ann Buchanan, also a native of Ireland; and of 
this union were born four children. James H. was 
the second son. His mother must have been a noble 
womian, if we may judge by the son's respect for 
motherhood. Living till 1858, she was blessed in 
seeing her greatest son attain to the full maturity 
of a noble manhood, even If his chief honors came 
in later years. 

Of his early school days, one story that Is authen- 
tic is thoroughly characteristic, proving the boy to 
be the father of the man. A teacher compelled the 
little boy as a punishment to write upon his slate 
"Stupid goose" and show It around to the scholars. 
"Aren't you ashamed ?" asked the teacher. As quick 
as a flash the boy answered without outraged feel- 
ings: "No, I am not, because It is a lie !" 



Life Sketch of Dr. Carlisle. 23 

He was prepared for college by James W. Hud- 
son, of the Mt. Zion Academy, Winnsboro, and en- 
tered the sophomore class in the South Carolina 
College in 1842, having ridden to Columbia on 
horseback. He has been heard to say that he could 
not have passed an entrance examination, but natu- 
ral ability and diligence enabled him to win second 
honor in the class of 1844. The first honor was 
awarded to Patrick H. Nelson, killed as a Confed- 
erate officer in the battle of the Crater in 1864. The 
subject of his graduating address was, "The Charac- 
ter of Shelley's Writings." I had been eager to read 
the address, for I was curious to see his estimate of 
a poet I had never heard him mention. But even 
at that early age it was the moral character that 
attracted — or, as in Shelley's case, repelled — him, 
and there is in the short address no attempt at anal- 
ysis or estimate of poetical quality. He had already 
become acquainted with the poet whose moral and 
religious quality strongly appealed to him. At four- 
teen he carried his first copy of Cowper into the pine 
woods and read it there with such satisfaction that 
ever afterwards this was his favorite poet, certainly 
oftener quoted by him than any other. 

Late In life he expressed a regret with which I 
completely sympathize. "It Is one of the regrets of 
my life," he said, "that I never saw the mountains 
or the sea until I reached manhood. I feel, on this 
account, that my life has been narrowed and my 



24 Carlisle Memorial Volume. 

imagination made barren. The biggest thing of my 
boyhood's imagination was a sand hill." 

For nine years after graduation he taught first 
in the Odd Fellows' School, then in the Columbia 
Male Academy. At this time he was painfully sen- 
sitive of his limitations. "Why, sir," said he on one 
occasion, "if those Columbia people had taken stones 
to throw at me, I would have taken to my heels." 
A remark of his shows that his well-known aversion 
to money-making was as strong then as in later life. 
In those days every schoolmaster collected his own 
fees ; and Dr. Carlisle said to Prof. Duncan Wallace 
fifty years later that he felt that, rather than go from 
patron to patron requesting the payment of what 
was due him, he would have gone to work and 
earned it over again. Perhaps the most notable 
public utterances of his school-teaching period were 
an address spoken before the Society of Missionary 
Inquiry of the Presbyterian Theological Seminary 
at Columbia, published in the Southern Presbyterian 
Quarterly Review, and an article on the "Essays of 
John Foster," published in the Southern Methodist 
Quarterly Reviezv, "a paper which was universally 
praised and admired by the readers of the Reviezv." 
I remember that when I entered Wofford he used 
frequently to quote from John. Foster — a habit that 
persisted through life. 

In 1848 he was married to Margaret Jane Bryce, 
of Columbia, who was his devoted and faithful com- 
panion to her death, which occurred in the Christ- 



Life Sketch of Dr. Carlisle. 25 

mas holidays of 1891. If the examples of his 
mother and his wife chiefly fostered in him, as it 
is fair to infer, the high and pure ideal which he 
cherished of woman, then Mrs. Carlisle needs no 
further eulogy. "A faithful wife and mother (tell 

A that means a great deal) has passed away, a 

woman of rare usefulness and Christian purity." 
So he wrote of a good woman In 1888. Of this 
union were born four children, two of whom died 
in infancy. The other two — Sarah Herbert and 
James H., Jr. — were members of his household to 
the end of his life. 

He was elected a member of the original faculty 
of Wofford College at the Newberry session of the 
South Carolina Conference In November, 1853. "I 
had registered at the hotel," he told Dr. S. A. Web- 
er, "and was going upstairs when I met several 
gentlemen coming down. Brother Stacy said to 
me: *I congratulate you. Wofford College has just 
been organized, and you have been elected Professor 
of Mathematics,' I was surprised, for it was the 
first Intimation I had had of it. I had not been a 
candidate." That was like him. All the prefer- 
ments and honors of a lifetime came to him im- 
sought, as they came to Dr. Garland. Dr. Weber 
said: "He has frequently told me that mathematics 
would not have been his choice of a chair if he had 
been consulted. I feel sure he would have preferred 
mental and moral philosophy." 

From 1854 to 1875 he performed the duties of his 



26 Carlisle Memorial Volume. 

professorship; and when Dr. Shipp resigned the 
presidency of the college, in 1875, to take a profes- 
sorship in the Theological Department of Vanderbilt 
University, Dr. Carlisle was unanimously elected to 
succeed him. He continued to perform the duties 
of the chair of mathematics along with those of 
the presidency, never moving from his own profes- 
sor's residence into that set apart for the President 
In 1902 he resigned the active duties of the presi- 
dency, being succeeded by Dr. Henry Nelson Sny- 
der, then Professor of English in the college, and 
was made President Emeritus. He had sometime 
before given up the chair of mathematics and de- 
voted himself to lectures on morals and instruction 
in the Bible. He was elected a member of the first 
General Conference of the Southern Methodist 
Church to which laymen were admitted and was 
regularly sent as a delegate thereafter as long as he 
would consent to go. In 1880 he was lay fraternal 
messenger, with Dr. Atticus G. Haygood, to the 
General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal 
Church. In 1870 or 1871 the honorary degree of 
LL.D. was conferred upon him by Southwestern 
University, of Georgetown, Tex. Such are the 
simple annals of this man whom everybody now 
considers, and has long considered, the greatest 
South Carolinian of his day, 

"He was," says Dr. Weber, "frequently asked to 
leave Wofford College, with the inducement of a 
larger salary and a wider field. I know that he was 



Life Sketch of Dr. Carlisle. 27 

grateful for such complimentary consideration. We 
talked freely on the subject. Indeed, I did not agree 
with his declination in every instance. But I very 
much doubt if he ever seriously considered the mat- 
ter of leaving Wofford. He heard the college bell 
the first time it was rung to call the faculty and 
students to prayer and books, and there has been a 
fascination to him in the music ever since." Of the 
calls referred to above, I know of only one, the offer 
of the presidency of his Alma Mater, the University 
of South Carolina. His loyalty to Wofford, like 
that of Mark Hopkins to Williams, has had few 
parallels in American educational history. Presi- 
dent Snyder says that when he himself was consid- 
ering a call to leave Wofford, Dr. Carlisle said: 
"You will have to decide this for yourself. Your 
friends cannot help you. I can only tell you I have 
found this a wide enough field." This feeling was 
partly due to his conviction that as personal contact 
with, and direct influence upon, the individual stu- 
dent are all-important, so the small college has a 
mission which no big university can perform. 

Dr. Carlisle was a man of commanding appear- 
ance and would at once attract attention in any 
crowd. When he entered the General Conference 
at Atlanta, Dr. Cunnyngham, who had never seen 
him before, remarked: "There's a man!" He was 
six feet four inches in height and weighed about 
one hundred and ninety pounds. His head was un- 
usually large, or rather long, so that it was often 



28 Carlisle Memorial Volume. 

difficult to get a hat (it must have been at least an 
eight) to fit him. His hair and beard were dark ; the 
former worn moderately long, the latter full, but 
never long. His eyes were gray-blue and his most 
striking feature, bright and ordinarily calm and 
gentle, but brilliant when he was thoroughly aroused. 
His movements, as natural and dignified as his form 
was stately, on great occasions seemed majestic, 
though all unconsciously so. 

The house in which he lived for fifty-five years, 
a residence on the campus provided by the college, 
was a two-story brick building of eight or nine large 
rooms, with a kitchen and servants' rooms in the 
rear. In front was the campus, with its grove of 
pines. The vine-covered porch was the place where 
most visitors were received in mild weather, which 
in that region meant most of the year. The chairs 
on the porch were of the simplest character. In- 
deed, simplicity characterized the man and all his 
surroundings. I never knew any man of his emi- 
nence to live so unostentatiously. The furniture of 
the whole house was comfortable; nothing more. 
The room most associated with him in the memory 
of visitors was his study, whose walls were lined 
with plain dark-pine bookshelves reaching from the 
floor to the ceiling, so high that even a tall man 
needed a stepladder for the top shelves. A pine 
table with a cloth cover was the desk, and plain 
wooden-bottomed armchairs (his own with a home- 
made cushion), a rocking-chair or two, and a sofa 



Life Sketch of Dr. Carlisle. 29 

constituted the other furniture. The pictures were 
mostly likenesses of notable men, and the bric-a- 
brac chiefly historical or family mementos. A 
room in the college library is now fitted up with his 
books and furniture so as to be a perfect facsimile 
of it. 

He was a great reader, with the gift of photo- 
graphing a paragraph at a glance, quickly absorbing 
the contents without consciously reading every word. 
Among Dr. Carlisle's books, Bishop Mouzon, who 
delights to confess that Dr. Carlisle made him, men- 
tions as also his own inspiration in literature the 
works of F. W. Robertson, Dr. Bushnell, and Phil- 
lips Brooks. These, I remember, were among 
those oftenest quoted by Dr. Carlisle. To these 
may be added Henry Ward Beecher, Stanley's 
"Arnold" and "Jewish History," Cowper, and in 
late years Vinet and Dr. Alexander Maclaren. This 
communion with choice spirits he enjoyed as few 
men can and must often have been bored by callers. 
But he was always approachable and even affable, 
accommodating himself to his company, talking in 
the simplest manner about common acquaintances 
or general topics with those whose horizon was 
limited, but easily led by others of wider range 
farther afield. And here he took usually the Socrat- 
ic attitude of the inquirer who would learn from 
his interlocutor, only never with Socratic irony; 
and when he talked best you could be sure it was 
never for display. His conversation was the best 



3© Carlisle Memorial Volume. 

thing about him, really the greatest thing he ever 
did, except his classroom talks and an occasional 
great speech, though doubtless he was never aware 
of it. 

He played no games, was not fond of gardening, 
and took no systematic exercise. I never knew of 
his taking a long walk over the hills or through the 
woods. But he liked to walk down town (three- 
quarters of a mile), after college exercises in the 
afternoon, to the post office and the bookstore ; and 
as he walked with long, measured tread he would 
utter reflections about men and books and events 
that would now be intensely interesting if one could 
only recall them. Professor Lester, the youngest of 
his colleagues in the earlier period, used to be his 
companion on these downtown strolls, because he 
lived halfway; and after he was gone I succeeded, 
for the same reason, to this enviable privilege for 
my brief stay of four years. Prof. D. A. DuPre 
was probably most with him in the years after 1879. 
That amount of exercise would not have sufficed 
for most people whose brains were in such constant 
use; but he was much in the fresh air, if only sit- 
ting on the front porch, and his life was so equable 
and unhurried, his habits so regular, that he was 
never troubled with indigestion and regularly slept 
well. 

A striking parallel might be drawn between Dr. 
Carlisle and the greatest of Greek teachers. Soc- 
rates was completely above the temptation of money 



Life Sketch of Dr. Carlisle. 31 

and indifferent to worldly honors and preferments ; 
took no part in public affairs, except when drawn by 
lot for office or drafted for service as a soldier; 
never left Athens, except on military duty; was 
notably abstemious and completely master of his 
appetites ; wrote nothing, but communicated his ideas 
directly to the young men about him, content to 
leave the seed thus sown to germinate in the fruitful 
soil of human souls. So Dr. Carlisle cared less for 
dollars and what they would buy than any man I 
ever knew. It has been mentioned above that he 
put aside at once and peremptorily the suggestion 
of further political service when waited on by some 
of his fellow citizens, though this doubtless looked 
to the House of Representatives at Washington and 
eventually the United States Senate. He rarely left 
Spartanburg, partly because seasickness made travel 
on the cars a torture, but also because he was re- 
tiring and averse even to the applause of admiring 
audiences. "What is a man to do under such con- 
ditions?" he once asked Dr. Baer, after some lady's 
lavish compliments. "Just look like a fool and say 
nothing, as you did," replied Dr. Baer. He had 
his bodily faculties under such discipline that no- 
body ever thought of him as being tempted like ordi- 
nary mortals. He wrote a good deal, but only short 
articles, in response to the insistent demands of the 
religious periodical press. He wrote no books. He 
was, however, always unconsciously teaching like 
Socrates, pouring his thoughts into the eager minds 



32 Carlisle Memorial Volume. 

of young disciples. And this has brought forth 
the most diverse fruit, both intellectual and spirit- 
ual. Socrates's constant plea to his fellow citizens 
was: "O, best of men, dwellers in Athens, a city 
the greatest and most famous for wisdom and pow- 
er, are you not ashamed to care for money, that you 
may have as much as possible, and for reputation 
and honor? But for sanity and truth and your 
soul, how it shall be as good as possible, you take 
neither care nor thought." This appeal really ex- 
pressed the essence of all Dr. Carlisle's teaching; 
and yet I think he was in this not consciously imi- 
tating or even influenced by Socrates. He would 
surely have made frequent reference to Socrates if 
he had read Plato much. The similarity of life and 
conduct was doubtless accidental. 

Dr. Carlisle was like Dr. Mark Hopkins In work- 
ing more than fifty years in one small college, in that 
being a great moral force he spent himself entirely 
in influencing men, and in that he emphasized above 
all the power of personal influence in inducing young 
men both to study books and to lead better lives. 
But his great exemplar, whom he followed more or 
less consciously, was Dr. Arnold, of Rugby. Say- 
ings of Arnold adorned the walls of his recitation 
room, and I have heard Arnold's name on his lips 
oftener than that of any other teacher. He pre- 
pared an abridged edition of Stanley's "Arnold" for 
the Chautauqua Press, saying in the introduction: 
"It is an era in the history of any young teacher 



Life Sketch of Dr. Carlisle. 33 

when he becomes familiar with the 'Life of Thomas 
Arnold.' " If he had ever gone to England, I am 
sure he would have sought, above all other spots, 
the grave of the greatest of English teachers, as 
Bishop McDowell did, and would have wished, like 
the Bishop, to be alone, that he might do homage 
with his tears to a kindred spirit. In another par- 
ticular he was like Dr. Arnold. Senator Smith, of 
South Carolina, says: 

Dr. Carlisle differed from other educators in one respect: 
he never seemed to desire that we should at any cost be- 
come scholars, but that at any cost we should do our duty, 
meet the obligations that come to us as men. Then, if 
scholarship was the result, well and good; but if not, there 
were to be no regrets, provided we had faithfully and hon- 
estly and to the fullest possible extent met the obligations of 
student life. His respect for the honest, plodding mediocre 
was as profound and real as for the most brilliant student, 
provided both did their duty. 

That reminds me how often I have heard him cite 
the incident in Dr. Arnold's life of the youth who 
said to him, "Why do you speak angrily, sir? In- 
deed, I have done the best I could," and Dr. Ar- 
nold's comment, "I could stand hat in hand before 
that man." 

As a public speaker Dr. Carlisle had extraordi- 
nary gifts. Associate Justice Woods, of the Su- 
preme Court of South Carolina, after mentioning 
character and profound moral optimism as sources 
of his power, says: 

3 



34 Carlisle Memorial Volume. 

The third element was eloquence. I do not mean by elo- 
quence merely brilliant expression, polished gesture, rounded 
periods, or artistic polish. Some of these he had without 
effort. But if speech be eloquence which moves the emotions 
too deeply to admit of outward demonstration, which carries 
conviction and arouses the whole man to the best aspirations 
and the most solemn of resolutions, then he was eloquent. . . . 
He spoke from a luminous mind and pure heart in that 
strong and simple English of which he was a master, of the 
deep principles of life and character, and made these princi- 
ples vital with his own powerful conviction of the soul's 
perils, aspirations, and possibilities. And he who could listen 
and not feel that he was under the influence of a great human 
power was indeed poor in spirit. 

At Spartanburg he was for fifty years the speaker 
whom everybody liked to hear. His audiences were 
always larger than noted orators from elsewhere 
could attract, and I never knew any one to think 
him uninteresting or find any speech of his tire- 
some. He never told stories or anecdotes in his 
speeches to catch or hold the attention of his audi- 
ence, and there was never a word that the most re- 
fined woman might not have heard without a blush. 
Some of us used to say that the man behind it made 
so impressive what he said. In the long run that 
is probably always true — an utterance is worth 
something just in proportion to the worth of the 
man behind it. 

If readers who were never students of Dr. Car- 
lisle's should feel disappointment in his published 
addresses, we who knew him would think of his 
own remark about a speech by William C. Preston: 



Life Sketch of Dr. Carlisle. 35 

"It was oratory ; but its publication, stripped of his 
delivery, would not have added to his reputation." 
The best is lost, but we are glad of what remains. 
That is true also of one of the most effective short 
speeches of his life, his salutation to President Eliot 
when he visited Wofford in 1909. I cannot repro- 
duce the scene nor the men nor the Doctor's inimi- 
table manner; but the situation was this: "When I 
was a little boy wading through the dismal swamp of 
the multiplication table, you were a babe in arms. 
Rejoice, O young man, In thy strength!" 

He was not a great college executive or business 
head. As he had no gift for getting, hoarding, or 
turning over money for himself, so he did not try to 
get money for the college, either from rich men or 
from mass meetings of the people, and he left the 
management of college money matters entirely to 
the Board of Trustees and to the financial officers. 
To the same hands he left the construction of new 
buildings and material advancement generally. He 
did not share the American craze for numbers and 
did not believe the best results could be produced, 
either Intellectually or morally, with very large num- 
bers. He used to say, in fact: "When two hundred 
and fifty students enter the front door of the college, 
I go out at the back." 

It was, then, as a teacher and molder of men and 
not as an executive that he was great. The presi- 
dency helped him only in leaving him freer in taking 
the initiative and directing the current of college 



36 Carlisle Memorial Volume. 

life according to his individual preferences and 
ideals. And here his weak points may be admitted 
before his strong ones are stated. Strictly speaking, 
he was not a scholar in any line, certainly not in his 
specialty; and probably none of his best students 
ever considered him a fine drillmaster in mathe- 
matics or a maker of mathematicians or an authority 
on that subject. Young preachers and lawyers and 
men in public life and all others who might be es- 
pecially concerned about public and private morals 
had more reason to be grateful to him than those 
who later occupied chairs of mathematics or physics 
or astronomy. So it happened, then, that, no matter 
who heard the lessons or gave the lectures in moral 
philosophy at Wofford College, the real source and 
stirrer and arbiter of moral ideas there for the first 
half century was Dr. Carlisle. And it was a very 
wise move when, sometime in the nineties, he was 
relieved entirely of mathematics and put in charge 
of ethical instruction. Even in the matter of moral 
education it was sometimes felt and even said that 
boys at Wofford were coddled too much- — kept, as it 
were, in a hotbed and so in danger of a rude awak- 
ening when thrown out into the world of men — that 
ideas as to observance of the Sabbath, as to vouth- 
ful amusements, such as dancing and card-playing, 
the theater and opera, were too strict ; so that when 
men came to think and act for themselves they might 
undergo a sort of revulsion of feeling and fly to the 
other extreme. There was something in this; such 



Life Sketch of Dr. Carlisle. 37 

effects did sometimes occur. But, on the whole, the 
balance was immensely in favor of the Doctor's 
moral teachings. Such criticisms were made by 
younger men oftener than by older. As men were 
buffeted about by the waves in the sea of business 
and public affairs, they found the essential doctrines 
and principles inculcated in Dr. Carlisle's lectures, 
and especially by his conduct, the best ballast for 
the voyage of life. 

The hard part comes now, to attempt to state with 
any adequacy his strong points as teacher and head 
of the college. He was strong after the Dr. Arnold 
and Dr. Hopkins type — that is, he regarded the 
chief work of he head of the college to be the 
making of men, the development of immature 
youths into capable, honest, high-minded, patriotic 
citizens and Christians. His talks about money — 
and they were frequent — were apt to be full of 
warnings about the danger from covetousness and 
the misuse of money. He laid great stress upon 
honorable success in life, kept the students posted as 
to the intellectual and material achievements of 
alumni, and stimulated them by constant reminders 
of the great things done by the best and ablest men 
of every race and age. The lessons of men's lives — 
biography — were his favorite means of incitement 
to virtue. He wanted the college to be good, not 
big; a safe and wholesome and uplifting place for 
ambitious youths to work and grow in, not a gath- 
ering place for hordes of all sorts of young fellows 



38 Carlisle Memorial Volume. 

sent thither by parents or drifting there to have a 
good time. 

To me Dr. Carhsle was the great moral teacher 
and molder of men's characters. I knew him forty 
years — four years as a pupil of his, later for four 
years as his young colleague, and all the rest of the 
time as his friend. In dedicating to him a recent 
volume of essays I used the words, *'The best man 
I have ever known and the most potent human in- 
fluence in my life." Justice Woods, commenting 
on this, said: "It would not be remarkable that one 
man should say that of another if it were not true 
that these words would be accepted by many others 
as expressing their own estimate." I repeat that he 
was the best man I have ever known in the flesh, 
the most unselfish, the freest from love of money, 
the purest in thought and word and deed, the most 
exemplary In conduct. If I add that he was also 
wise, self -controlled, slow to anger, modest, patient, 
courteous, kindly, gentle, tolerant, loving his neigh- 
bor as himself, I am aware that I have almost ex- 
hausted the vocabulary of good qualities. But I 
have only told the truth. I have known him to make 
mistakes, but they were errors of judgment and not 
of will; he always meant to do right. He was the 
only man I have ever known with whose motives I 
could never find any fault. President Snyder recalls 
that, when he was going to Wofford in 1888, I said 
to him of Dr. Carlisle: "He is more of a New Tes- 
tament man than any one I have ever known." I 



Life Sketch of Dr. Carlisle. 39 

said thirty years ago that if I knew Dr. Carlisle 
would not get to heaven I would give myself no 
further concern about the matter. I say that still. 
I knew then, and I know now, that such a sentiment 
is exaggerated ; but it was and is my estimate of the 
man's moral soundness and goodness. And I am 
glad that I have felt thus about a man. It has up- 
lifted me, has been a stay and a safeguard. His 
life has always been to me the unanswerable argu- 
ment for a belief in the Christian religion. If we 
live long with a Christlike man and he stands the 
test all the time, day in and day out, it becomes 
much easier to believe in a Christlike God. My 
experience is probably not at all unique. A college 
senior at the time of his death wrote: "Those who 
sat in his classroom had the blessed privilege of 
partaking of the very nature of the Christ." Most 
men are really tremendously concerned about the 
Christian religion, however it may seem to the 
contrary. They do not so much want to hear it 
preached as to see it lived. They want proofs of its 
claims; and hves are the best proofs. A great life 
that is an epistle read of all men is an inestim.able 
boon to humanity. The men of whom we can say, 
as the pupil of Socrates said of his great master, 
"The best man we have ever known and the wisest 
and the justest" — these are the men that save us. 

I have never known a man anywhere so looked 
up to and reverenced by men and women and chil- 
dren as Dr. Carlisle was; never a man whom his 



40 Carlisle Memorial Volume. 

students so nearly worshiped while directly under 
his influence, still more as they grew older and real- 
ized the value of such an example. One senior said 
as he lay dead: "He was our Dr. Carlisle, and we 
loved him." Another: "Tread softly, fellow stu- 
dents, for every inch of Wofford's campus is now 
hallowed ground." It is an everlasting pity that 
every young man who goes to college does not at 
that impressionable period come under the domina- 
tion of some man of great personality and wise char- 
acter. Happy are those — and they were nearly all 
the Wofford students for fifty years — who found in 
Dr. Carlisle such a mentor. "He had a personal 
interest," says Justice Woods, "in every college 
student he knew and had the rare power of inspir- 
ing awe and affection at the same time. He always 
remembered the men who had been at Wofford 
College and so watched their careers in college and 
in after life that he made every man know that he 
was expecting of him the best achievement of which 
he was capable." Senator Smith meant much the 
same thing when he said : "I am sure that one char- 
acteristic of Dr. Carlisle's that drew him closer to 
the student body than anything else was his great 
yearning that the boy at college for the first time 
should not disappoint the mother and father at 
home, making such sacrifices, hoping such hopes, 
and dreaming such dreams for their boy. He could 
come nearer voicing that yearning and standing in 
the parents' stead than any teacher it has ever been 



Life Sketch of Dr. Carlisle. 41 

my fortune to meet." No wonder that the Senator 
added: "I have felt the same desire to go back to 
Dr. CarHsle and carry what little trophies I have 
won and lay them at his feet as a tribute to what 
he has done for me and hoped for me that I have 
felt in taking them back to my mother." 

Dr. Carlisle's chief means of contact with the 
students for purposes of moral influence were, first, 
his classroom talks, not less in the regular mathe- 
matical hours than in the Monday Bible lesson with 
the juniors ; secondly, his Sunday afternoon optional 
class meetings for young men at the Methodist 
church; thirdly, impromptu short talks at morning 
chapel as President; and, finally, interviews with 
individual students in his study. His classroom 
talks have already been touched upon. The Sunday 
afternoon meeting deserves somewhat fuller men- 
tion. Four o'clock was the hour ; and though purely 
voluntary, it was regularly attended by a very large 
proportion of the students, so large that any ordi- 
nary room was inadequate. Prof. Warren Du Pre 
had at his residence at the same hour a similar meet- 
ing for the young women of the church and town. 
Dr. Carlisle used to discuss at first some lesson of 
Scripture very much after the manner of a Sunday 
school lecture ; then opportunity was offered to the 
students to give personal expression to any feeling 
that might weigh upon heart or conscience. It was 
much like a Methodist class meeting, only the young 
men were not called out, and the talks were perhaps 



42 Carlisle Memorial Volume. 

more spontaneous and Informal. The chief occa- 
sion of the kind was the last Sunday afternoon of 
the college year, when the members of the graduat- 
ing class were expected to avail themselves of the 
opportunity to speak a word to their fellows. Those 
Sunday afternoons of Dr. Carlisle's class seem to 
me now, as they did then, the best single religious 
influence of the college course. 

For the short chapel talks at morning prayers 
there was no special day set apart. They might 
come at any time. If some former student had won 
some prize or special distinction in university work, 
the Doctor was apt to make allusion thereto before 
the students — e. g., Dr. Kirkland recalls how he 
referred to the winning of a medal at Vanderbilt 

University by and added that "no more such 

mentions would be made, it would be assumed that 
Wofford men would take all prizes thus offered." 
Dr. Duncan Wallace, for four years a pupil and 
later a colleague of Dr. Carlisle's, thus vividly de- 
scribes the effects of such college talks: 

In the short talks which he frequently addressed to the en- 
tire student body at the morning chapel services on the occa- 
sion of some great man's birthday, some great event in the 
world, some awful tragedy recounted in the daily press in the 
life of a young man, or simply because the impulse was upon 
him, he was unapproachable. After listening as a member 
of the faculty in rapt attention and delight to such words, I 
have heard middle-aged colleagues who had heard him for 
many years exclaim that no other man coula ever put such 
power into such words. 

One occasion that will never be forgotten was a certain 



Life Sketch of Dr. Carlisle. 43 

morning on which a great moral question — the eternal ques- 
tion of the young man and the strange woman — demanded 
strong speech. He requested his colleagues to leave the chapel, 
a request which I never knew him to make except on that 
occasion. He was, it chanced, in bodily weakness and seated 
himself upon the rostrum in a chair. On such occasions the 
accidental surroundings of time and place seemed to sink 
away; classmates were no longer perceived; each student 
seemed to himself to be alone with the man at the other end 
of his range of vision ; the moments were intense, and it was 
a relief to the overwrought faculties when one was free to 
seek the open air. 

Finally, the chief avenue of approach to the stu- 
dent's soul, the most characteristic way of showing 
his interest in his spiritual welfare, was his habit of 
asking each one sometime in his college course to 
come to his study at a certain hour. There he talked 
with the young man, presumably about his soul's 
welfare and his aims in life; but the student always 
felt that the hour had been too sacred to reveal what 
had passed. Alluding to such an interview. Dr. 
Weber wrote me: "How many of us boys of his to 
the last days of our lives thank and bless him for 
his personal work ! Just now I am having thoughts 
too sacred for utterance. Suffice it to say that I 
remember, more than half a century ago, when, to 
adopt his own way of expressing it in his own study 
with only us two present, I was enabled to pass a 
crisis In my life on upgrade." 

If you understand that a whole college felt as Dr. 
Weber did, not one or several generations, but all 
the generations of college students for fifty years, 



44 Carlisle Memorial Volume. 

and so all the alumni of the college for all that time, 
that the whole town felt so and the whole State, 
you realize something of the influence of the man 
and of his enormous power for good. But you 
could never understand the secret of that influence 
and that power unless you had seen that life lived. 
Then you would understand, though you might not 
be able to explain it to others. When you tried to 
explain it to one w^ho did not know the man, you 
would probably give it up and say: "Well, anyway, 
it is a fact." 

Perhaps a characteristic, authentic anecdote or 
two may give the secret of his power with young 
men better than formal accounts of his usual meth- 
ods of instruction. The Doctor could be very se- 
vere when the occasion seemed to demand severity, 
and there was never a student that did not fear him 
and stand in awe of his righteous indignation. But, 
as Mr. Wallace says: 

The Doctor's magnanimity was always more than equal to 
his severity. The following incident from about 1880 was a 
painful humiliation to him, but it elevated him in the eyes of 
his class. After the calling of the roll, he had requested the 
class to close their books and had begun the recitation. Soon 
he noticed a student in the back of the room reading his text- 
book. It looked mean. It appeared a clear unmitigated case 
of cheating. The Doctor delivered to the student a terrible 
reprimand. Then he paused. The offending student said 
quietly : "Doctor, I did not hear you say, 'Close your books.' " 
It was like a blow. The man of large heart attempted no 
explanation or excuse, but rose from his chair, walked the 
length of the room with extended hand, and grasped the hand 



Life Sketch of Dr. Carlisle. 45 

of the student with the words: "Mr, , I beg your pardon. 

I beg your pardon." 

To Illustrate the Doctor's humor. Dr. Wallace 
tells the following anecdote: 

There was a very young but extremely dignified professor 
recently returned from Germany. To the disgust of the boys, 
he had introduced the study of Anglo-Saxon, a subject in 
which he afterwards obtained some distinction. One of the 
students gained access to his classroom and wrote upon the 
board an excellent piece of rhyming wit at the expense of 
German scholarship and its local representative. The offender 
confessed and, at the instance of the professor, was summoned 
before the faculty. The President wore his severest expres- 
sion and forced his index finger, against which his face 
rested, to an unusual height along his temple — always regard- 
ed by the boys as a sure register of the gravity of the occa- 
sion — as he asked : "Well, Mr. K , what are you summoned 

before the faculty for?" With a gesture of helpless innocence 
and a voice full of pathos, of which he is a master to this 

day, K answered: "For writin' po-er-try, Doctor." The 

Doctor burst into a laugh and dismissed the case without 
further inquiry. 

Perhaps the two occasions in his long life that 
were most honorable to him and for which he was 
doubtless most humbly grateful were the following, 
as told by Dr. Wallace : 

The most affecting incident ever witnessed in the college 
chapel was at the commencement exercises in 1895, when Hon. 
Samuel Dibble, the first graduate of the college, unexpectedly, 
except to the alumni, stepped upon the rostrum to present to 
Dr. Carlisle a handsome gold watch and chain, the gift of 
the alumni in attendance. The recollections which crowded 
upon the speaker as he voiced his peculiarly fitting senti- 
ments almost incapacitated him for speech. Dr. Carlisle was 



4-6 Carlisle Memorial Volume. 

even more visibly moved. "Can this be the young student and 
this the young professor of fifty years ago?" he asked. He 
expressed his gratitude for the feelings which had prompted 
the act of his old pupils and professed his unworthiness of 
such devotion. He said that there and then he wished to 
beg the pardon of any student to whom he had ever been 
unjust. But his words were few in accordance with his re- 
mark on another such occasion when the students presented 
him with a token of their affectionate regard, that "one who 
could fittingly respond on such an occasion would be unworthy 
of the occasion." 

An incident springing from similar sentiments and illus- 
trating the feeling of the people of his home town toward him 
occurred on his seventy-ninth birthday. About two hundred 
of the professional and business men of Spartanburg on the 
afternoon of March 4, 1904, marched in a body to the Doctor's 
residence on the campus and expressed, through Mr. Stobo 
J. Simpson, their veneration and affection for the man, the 
teacher, the citizen whose life had done so much for them and 
their community. 

The editor of the World's Work seems to have 
got completely the Spartanburg view of the man. 
Under the caption "A Little Story of a Teacher," 
he wrote in October, 1908: 

If you were to go to Spartanburg, S. C, and spend an 
evening in the home of any man who lives there, the conver- 
sation would be sure to turn on Dr. Carlisle. And if you 
should happen to go up to the home of any one who has a 
direct personal interest in Wofford College, the chances are 
that the most of the talk of the evening would be about Dr. 
Carlisle. If you should happen to be at the college at com- 
mencement time, you would hear a reverent and affectionate 
allusion to Dr. Carlisle in every public address. . . . 

And who is this Dr. Carlisle? A man who went to the 
college as a teacher of astronomy and moral science in 1854, 
when it was founded, and who has been there ever since, 



Life Sketch of Dr. Carlisle. 47 

part of the time as President and again as teacher. Doubtless 
neither philosophers nor astronomers regard him as a great 
contributor to their departments of learning. Yet it is doubt- 
ful whether there be an astronomer or a philosopher at any 
institution or in any community in our whole land who has 
exerted so strong an influence upon the young men who have 
come in contact with him. They do not say that he taught 
them astronomy or that he taught them philosophy, but they 
all do bear testimony to his having given them, in greater 
measure than any other man, a right adjustment to life and a 
moral uplift — a kind of influence that the oldest of his pupils, 
who are now themselves far on in middle life, remember with 
affection that has grown since their youth. 

Says Dr. Wallace again: 

Men often wondered why the Doctor had no magnum 
opus, why he wrote no great book or devoted his powers to 
no great discovery, or threw his strength into no specific line 
of social or religious work. The Doctor did have his magnum 
opus, but it did not lie along the printed page. It was to make 
the most powerful and lasting efficacious impression, morally 
and religiously, upon the young men whom he could reach. 
It was a favorite thought with him that no holy, unselfish 
life in even the remote ages of the past is lost, but that its 
power for good is still in the world; and without doubt this 
must have been precious to him as he sought with singleness 
of heart to glorify his Creator and Redeemer through the 
lives of men who were to live after him. 

An extract from one of his speeches illustrates 
this thought — ^the influence of the teacher that lives 
on in the memory of his pupils: 

The gay traveler or excitement seeker will never seek his 
resting place. But in after years some old pupil, subdued, 
chastened by the stern discipline of experience, will turn 
aside from the thoroughfare of life and clear away the weeds 
a little space until, he finds it; and, the impressions of his 



48 Carlisle Memorial Volume. 

youth coming over him, he will there consecrate himself to 
high and holier aims in life, and the seed dropped by the hand 
that molders beneath shall spring up and bring forth its ap- 
pointed harvest. Is not that a monument for which kings 
might wish to die? Why could not a man sleep as sweetly 
there as in Westminster Abbey? 

It was perfectly natural that Dr. Carlisle, who 
was so idolized by his students and so revered by 
his fellow townsmen, should have been much quoted, 
especially as he had a striking epigrammatic way 
of saying things. The sayings cited in the follow- 
ing paragraphs have been gathered from various 
sources, mainly from memoranda made by Dr. Sny- 
der. Some few of his expressions were used so 
often as to be generally recognized as stock phrases 
of his — e. g., "Poor fellow, it's a crisis in his life, 
an era in his history"; or, "I hope he is on up- 
grade now." But often they seem to come freshly 
coined from a furnace of strong feeling. Dr. Wal- 
lace expressed it thus: "Winged words sprang up 
in the path of his speech as the offspring of 'thought 
under high emotional tension.' Once I remember, 
in speaking of vulgar and profane language, he 
turned suddenly to the young man and with flashing 
eyes and vibrant tone exclaimed: 'The temple of 
your soul is become the menagerie for the obscene 
reveling of every unclean beast.' " Close akin to 
that is the remark that Dr. Snyder heard him make 
in some talk to students: "To be the roommate at 
college of a low, vile blackguard is a dear price to 
pay even for an education." And it was a very 



Life Sketch of Dr. Carlisle. 49 

gentle and wise admonition to his boys: "See that 
your roommate has a good roommate." One of 
them wrote afterwards: "Those words have been 
the most potent influence of my life." In his last 
years he often dismissed a class with the emphatic 
words, "Don't forget the inner man !" and his con- 
stant admonition, "Don't drift!" will linger in the 
ears of all the later generations of Wofford men. 

"Young men, beware of crowds !" he would some- 
times say to a class, as he had said in his address to 
the boys at Cokesbury School in 1854. "Many a 
man will contribute his share, as one in a crowd, to 
that which he would tremble to think of doing 
alone. . . . Young men should remember that 
conscience in all its vocabulary has no such word as 
zve." And the counterpart of that is another winged 
phrase caught from his lips by Dr. Snyder: "Three 
men commit a crime. Each is guilty of the whole. 
There are no vulgar fractions in sin." 

Admonitions on the value and dangers of money 
were frequent in his talks to students, of course. 
Here are two or three: "There are two classes of 
students that cannot afford to spend much money, 
those who have worked and made their own money 
and those for whom somebody else has worked hard 
and made money." On another occasion he said: 
"While you are planning to spend a dollar foolishly, 
your parents are planning how to save a dollar that 
you may stay in college." The following is a tru- 
ism, yet thoroughly characteristic of his way of 

4 



5© Carlisle Memorial Volume. 

generalizing: "The management of that perplexing 
and delicate matter is rightfully the invariable test 
of character, for it is at this point that scholar and 
sage and poet and schoolboy must touch common 
life and bear its strain." "A man may," he said to 
his students, "be able to tell in six languages why he 
can't pay his debt. The debt, if ever paid, is paid 
in solid, everyday American gold and silver or green- 
backs." 

Prodigality with money had for him its counter- 
part In extravagance of language. "The favorite 
lurking place of truth is never a thicket of superla- 
tives" was a gentle rebuke made to a young woman, 
but often applied in other words to young men. 
Money, chastity, and the value of human life were 
the three subjects that he felt most concerned about 
for young men. "An insult," he said, "is never an 
excuse for taking human life. Time will cure the 
wound of the insult, but will only deepen the stain 
of the blood." "If an angry drunken man were 
after me," he said on another occasion, "I would 
give him the right of way, just I would give it to 
a mad-dog." To a mature, sensible man he knew 
that would seem only prudence, but also that to a 
hot-headed youth it might seem cowardice. 

He was never bored by teaching, and he had as 
exalted an estimate as Socrates of the dignity of the 
master teacher. "One of the last great teachers," 
he apostrophized one day, "a term that is growing 
into contempt in the presence of the scholar, the 



Life Sketch of Dr. Carlisle. 51 

specialist, who is called upon to make an original 
investigator of every freshman and sophomore." 
The young freshman was always to him a thing of 
curious and absorbing interest. It may have been 
the freshman goemetry class he consoled with the re- 
mark: "That young student who does not have a 
case of homesickness now and then either has not a 
happy home or is unworthy of one." "Even the 
plainest freshman," he said, "doubtless in the faculty 
roomx, "is a combination lock which can be opened by 
the right teacher In the right way, the right teacher 
that may thus enter his mind and heart." There was 
a whole condensed textbook of pedagogical wisdom 
in his retort one day to Dr. Snyder, who as a young 
professor had answered the Doctor's remark, "We 
can't expect students to be perfect," with: "I'd like 
to have a perfect class just once." As quick as a 
flash came the words: "A perfect boy might re- 
quire a perfect teacher." Walking one day to the 
funeral of a young freshman, he said with unfor- 
gettable Impressiveness: "This young freshman Is 
now wiser than any one of his professors — graduat- 
ed at twenty-one into the larger light of another 
worid." 

The danger as well as the opportunity of college 
life he fully realized and often emphasized, saying 
once: "In almost every case a young man fixes in 
college the two points of the straight line which 
determines the direction of his life." "There is 
danger," he said again, "that colleges are turning 



52 Carlisle Memorial Volume. 

out every year accomplished tramps (with a Latin 
diploma in their pockets) to swell that vast and in- 
creasing army which must either beg or steal." Re- 
ferring on one occasion to four hundred men and 
women applying for ten positions in the gift of the 
Legislature, paying from forty to sixty dollars and 
lasting only a few weeks, he asked: "Is it possible 
that the majority of young men are finding no fixed 
positions In life for which they are thoroughly pre- 
pared, but are floating out into that vast mass that 
pauperizes society and enriches jails? At any rate, 
I have a faith, as strong as my faith in the provi- 
dence of God, that society always has a proper place 
for that young man who can pay his way in force 
and integrity of character." 

The supreme importance of character was an in- 
exhaustible theme with him. "You cannot all be 
eloquent, young gentlemen; but you can every one 
live a pure, clean godly life and in that way preach 
to the world a sermon greater than any ever 
preached by human lips." "I have very few fears 
for a young man," he remarked, "when the simple 
faith of his childhood seems to be shaken by the 
trade winds of a critical attitude, by gusts of earnest 
inquiry, or even by a cyclone of ardent doubt, pro- 
vided he keep the foundations of his moral charac- 
ter pure and strong." "When character once begins 
to disintegrate," he said, "there is no telling where 
the breaking will show itself." "When a young man 
begins to drink, it is not that he will become a drunk- 



Life Sketch of Dr. Carlisle. 53 

ard. I have fears of something far worse. Society 
and home training have so frowned upon drinking 
that every step a young man takes in this direction 
is an act of deception. And so character is weak- 
ened at its most vital point, and be becomes a liar 
instead of a drunkard, or more probably both." 
There was nothing he so despised as a liar. It was 
a common remark in college that a student could not 
look the Doctor in the eye and tell him a lie. "I'm 
not talking," he said once, "to the educated young 
white man who can tell an outright untruth. There 
is nothing In him to talk to. You can't raise him 
with a lever, because there is nothing to rest your 
lever on. Sometimes your leg or your arm goes to 
sleep. It needs a sudden blow, a rubbing, to awake 
it. Conscience sometimes also goes to sleep and 
needs a strong moral shock to awaken it." I think 
he would certainly have explained Socrates's warn- 
ing voice (Sat/^o'vto'v Ti) as conscience, only to him it 
was positive as well as negative. "That little spark 
of celestial fire called conscience," he would say, 
"may become a consuming fire." 

Probably it was after receiving the request for 
an indorsement from some former student that he 
spoke as follows: "So many young men, after a 
college course in which integrity has been broken 
and character tarnished, write to me for recommen- 
dations for responsible positions, thus implying that 
a word from me can supply what they have not or 
else what they did the best they could to destroy. 



54 Carlisle Memorial Volume. 

implying also that the high quahties of character 
and conduct with them had grown up in a night and 
flourished as Jonah's gourd. Not so! Not so! 
Will you ever learn the lesson that the high mat- 
ters of conduct and character are not the spontane- 
ous fungus growth of a night, of two nights, of 
three nights, but the results of the slow, silent proc- 
esses of the years, renovating, purifying, strength- 
ening, and toughening through strenuous endeav- 
or?" To ambitious young men was especially ap- 
plicable the injunction: "Character and scholarship 
are too close together for a young man to build up 
one and at the same time trample down the other." 
And it seems to me I can see now his blazing eye 
and uplifted arm as he says from the rostrum: "If 
this country ever goes to ruin, it will not be from 
lack of Greek, Latin, and mathematics, but from 
lack of the basis of honest and true character." The 
same thought he expressed another time in these 
words: "This country will never go down in ruin 
for lack of educated, skilled men. It may go down 
for lack of moral character. And yet our Lord 
knew infinitely more of the good and evil in this 
world than we. He knew all things, and he was no 
pessimist." 

He was, of course, fully aware of the fierce 
storms that often assail and stir to the depths a 
young human soul. What help could he suggest, 
what refuge in such a crisis? This one suggestion: 
"That is a wonderful phrase of Nehemiah's about 



Life Sketch of Dr. Carlisle. 55 

consulting with himself. It is so suggestive. To 
hold a mass meeting of the powers of one's nature, 
to go solemnly into a committee of the whole upon 
the state of one's self — not a committee in which 
the anarchy of the impulses, the appetites, and the 
desires hold sway, but a committee presided over by 
the human will, illuminated by the imperial intellect, 
and guided by the keenly dividing dictates of the 
divine conscience — this is a high consultation with 
one's self." 

But the commonest appeal with him to the boy's 
conscience was the name mother. "Every mother," 
as Dr. Wallace well said, "was to him holy by her 
office, her sacrifice, and her service; and if woman 
could be anything other in his mind than what she 
is in the best meaning, he never spoiled the ideals of 
young men by revealing it." The one safe thing 
for the boy was always to confide in and consult, 
never to deceive, his mother. "Whether to go to 
the circus or opera house," he said, "is a matter of 
doubt (men may differ as to whether it is right or 
not) ; but there can be no difference of opinion as 
to whether it is right to deceive your mother about 
it." Next to mother, the strongest, frequentest 
appeal to him was in the name of sister. Urging 
purity of thought and conduct, he would entreat: 
"Think if it were your own sister. Remember, she 
is somebody's sister." His sense of the intimate 
relationship and value of wife is conveyed in the 



56 Carlisle Memorial Volume. 

epigram that was often on his lips: "A man's two 
best counselors are his wife and his pillow." 

With words like these he would hearten students 
for the steady round of toil that alone makes college 
work successful: "Thomas Carlyle has said that it 
was not a sign of strength when one had convul- 
sions so that it required seven strong men to hold 
him, but that the true strength was the daily, earnest 
bearing of burdens so that one grew stronger under 
them." So the real student is not the one who has 
convulsions of study on stated occasions — examina- 
tions and such like — but does his daily duties man- 
fully and thus by a gradual process feels himself 
growing and expanding under them. 

Because he loved young men and considered 
human life a precious privilege, he would some- 
times exclaim: "O young men, what a jewel you 
now have in your hands in the possession of young 
manhood ! Will you play with it as a baboon would 
with a glittering gem and then toss it into the mire ?" 
And the same yearning love for young men, as well 
as a strong sense of duty to society and the State, 
called forth the exhortation to his colleagues: "Let it 
be our constant aim that every day spent in the reci- 
tation room may tend to furnish those results which 
the Prussian king demanded of his university: 
'Fruits, gentlemen ; fruits in the soundness of men.' " 

A few sayings of Dr. Carlisle's gathered from 
other old pupils and friends may be added here. A 
thoroughly characteristic saying of his was: "It is 



Life Sketch of Dr. Carlisle. 57 

a terrible thing for a young man to have attained 
his ideal." One of his constant appeals to students 
was in these words: "Aim at the moon. You may- 
hit a bush, but you will hit something." Sometimes 
he would say to a class: "Israel was seeking a king. 
Young man, what are you seeking?" That was the 
way in which he drove home the Monday morning 
Bible lesson of the junior year. The following senti- 
ment of his was written years ago, but applies even 
more aptly to the present situation of our country: 
"He may be unwise who is sanguine ; but he is un- 
manly, unpatriotic, and unchristian who despairs." 

With all his greatness, Dr. Carlisle was very mod- 
est. One day he sent for Dr. Snyder, who found 
him much moved, "I understand," he said, "that a 
man who calls himself my friend purposes writing a 
life of me. If you are his friend, I beg you to pre- 
vent it. What is there to write? I am only a 
teacher." 

The following story, told by Dr. Snyder, indicates 
the unique position of Dr. Carlisle in the regard of 
South Carolinians: 

He was the "noblest Roman of them all." But what I 
really want to say to you is in relation to what happened to 
me last year while at the Gayoso Hotel, at Memphis, Tenn. 
We went in as strangers and registered ; and the hotel 
clerk, an old man, remarked that we were from South Caro- 
lina. He said he had a guest some weeks before from 
Abbeville, S. C, who had every appearance of being a 
gentleman. After being there a week or more, the South 
Carolinian came to him and asked him to cash a check for 
him- "It was a risky business," the clerk said, "for a hotel 



58 Carlisle Memorial Volume. 

to cash checks for the travehng public"; but as the man im- 
pressed him as being a gentleman, he hated to refuse. The 
thought struck him to ask the South Carolinian who was the 
greatest man in his State. The stranger dropped his head as 
if he were counting them. In a few moments he straightened 
up, smiled, and said : "Dr. James H. Carlisle, of Wofford 
College, Spartanburg, S. C." The hotel man told his guest 
that from what he hard heard of the State he would cash his 
check, as no one would carry a spurious check about who 
thought Dr. Carlisle the greatest man in his State. 

That is a good story, and it expresses the com- 
mon sentiment in South CaroHna for many years. 
"The greatest man I have ever known," said some 
years ago Ex-Lieutenant Governor Shands, of 
Mississippi, a South CaroHnian and a pupil of Dr. 
Carhsle's. "Dr. Carlisle and Wade Hampton I con- 
sider the greatest men I have ever met," said Ex- 
Congressman Dibble, of South Carolina. "The 
greatest man that South Carolina has ever pro- 
duced," said Senator E. D. Smith at the time of 
Dr. Carlisle's death. "The greatest man in the coun- 
try and the most successful in his line, the making of 
men," said Senator Tillman to Dr. Snyder. "The 
greatest man I have ever known," said J, L. Glenn, 
Esq., President of the Board of Trustees of Wof- 
ford College. "In him the State of South Carolina 
has lost her greatest citizen," wrote Bishop Kilgo 
and Dr. Chrietzberg in a memorial. "The most re- 
markable man I have met," said Jenkin Lloyd-Jones. 
"No other South Carolinian has wielded so strong 
and wide an influence for good so long a time as 
James H. Carlisle" — memorial editorial in the Co- 



Life Sketch of Dr. Carlisle. 59 

lumbia Record. "South Carolina says the long fare- 
well to her most reverently valued and best-loved 
son" — editorial in the Spartanburg Herald. 

This man whom the State of South Carolina so 
long delighted to honor, the most influential lay- 
man in the Southern Methodist Church, and re- 
vered in many States, was only a professor and 
president, at a salary of from fifteen hundred to 
two thousand dollars, in a small college that never 
had over three hundred students or a productive 
endowment of over one hundred and fifty thousand 
dollars. Truly, as President Mitchell, of the Uni- 
versity of South Carolina, said: "It bespeaks the 
nobility of soul of the people of the State that they 
singled out such a man as the chief object of their 
affection and admiration." And as some one wrote 
in the World's Work (June, 1907) : "There is no 
commercial standard by which the influence of Dr. 
Carlisle and Wofford College can be measured." 

Dr. Carlisle's fatal illness began with a fainting 
spell Monday morning, October 18, 1909. He ral- 
lied somewhat at intervals, but seemed to have been 
unconscious or under the influence of opiates most 
of the time. "To the end his thoughts were still of 
his students. As the dim light broke Into his cham- 
ber on one of the last mornings, he asked the time. 
'Six o'clock,' was the answer. Supposing it to be 
the early sunset of a winter day, he said: 'The boys 
will have a long evening to study.* How often will 
these words come with sweet sadness to the men 



6o Carlisle Memorial Volume. 

who read them, helping them, as they take up their 
tasks, to reaHze for themselves the truth of his 
noble saying: 'The hard points of onerous duties 
frequently done soon sweeten into the joys of high 
privilege'!" Wednesday morning he observed the 
uniform of the sick nurse and asked: "To what 
school do you belong?" When she replied that she 
was a nurse from the hospital, he said: "It is a 
broad field." So his last conscious words were one 
of his usual characteristic expressions. "During 
the last hours of his life he fancied himself in his 
classroom meeting a new freshman class and spoke 
at length to his boys as in times past. The ques- 
tions and the words of counsel and instruction were 
as well ordered, but for a word here and there, as 
when in the days of his strength he stamped the 
mint mark of his character upon the young men 
before him." At 7: 45 a.m. Thursday, October 21, 
he breathed his last. The college, the town, and 
the State had always honored him above all men; 
so his funeral was a fitting tribute to his worth. It 
was a fine autumn afternoon ( Friday, October 22 ) , 
and the simple ceremonies were held in front of the 
main college building. The burial service of the 
Church was read, prayers were offered by the pas- 
tors of the various Churches, and two of his favor- 
ite hymns were sung by the choir. There was no 
eulogy. That was as he had wished. Fully five 
thousand people were present. The negro congre- 
gations sent delegations. Ten students from the 



Life Sketch of Dr. Carlisle. 6i 

four college classes and Fitting School bore the cof- 
fin. The faculty and Board of Trustees were hon- 
orary pallbearers. These were followed by the 
whole student body and all alumni in attendance, 
then by the vast concourse of citizens. The proces- 
sion passed through rows of three thousand school 
children — for all the schools, both white and black, 
were present — lining the way on both sides from 
the college to the cemetery. All business was 
suspended in the town during the progress of the 
funeral. The floral offerings from the college, the 
town, and from all over the State were profuse and 
beautiful. The other colleges in the State sent del- 
egations, and distinguished men were present from 
all parts of the commonwealth. In view of such 
a life thus ended, the words with which Justice 
Woods closed his tribute are most appropriate: 

The death of a man to whom it was given to live a long 
and full life in the blessing of others by the exercise of these 
powers should not be marked by gloom and sad refrains, but 
rather by anthems of praise and triumph that all his life he 
stood fast and gave strength and hope to men. We know 
not of his future beyond this life; but there can be no ag- 
nosticism and no skepticism that he is 

"Of those immortal dead who live again 
In minds made better by their presence : live 
In pulses stirred by generosity, 
In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn 
For miserable aims that end with self, 
In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars, 
And with their mild persistence urge man's search 
To vaster issues." 

Madison, Wis. 



CHAPTER III. 
Dr. Carlisle as a Citizen. 



CHAPTER III 
Dr. Carlisle as a Citizen. 

BY WATSON B. DUNCAN. 

On Sunday evening, November 7, 1909, at eight 
o'clock, a great memorial service in honor of Dr. 
James H. Carlisle was held in the auditorium of 
Converse College, Spartanburg, S. C. The follow- 
ing program was observed: 

1. Presiding officer, Mr. W. E. Burnett, President Wofford 
College Alumni Association. 

2. Organ prelude. 

3. Hymn. 

4. Scripture-reading, Dr. J. S. Watkins. 

5. Prayer, Rev. W. H. K. Pendleton. 

6. Address, "Dr. Carlisle as an Educator," Dr. James H. 
Kirkland. 

7. Address, "Dr. Carlisle as a Citizen," Mr. Charles Petty. 

8. Address, "Dr. Carlisle as an Influence in the State," 
Judge D. E. Hydrick. 

9. Address, Mr. E. L. Archer. 

10. Hymn. 

11. Address, "Dr. Carlisle as a Friend of Youth," Dr. R. P. 
Pell. 

12. Address, "Dr. Carlisle as a Moral Force," Rev. R. S. 
Truesdale. 

13. Address, "Dr. Carlisle as a Christian," Dr. L. M. Roper. 

14. Address and presentation of resolutions. Dr. Henry N. 
Snyder. 

15. Hymn. 

16. Benediction, Rev. J. J. Ransom. 

At the conclusion of the address the following 
resolutions were unanimously adopted: 

5 (65) 



66 Carlisle Memorial Volume. 

For fifty-six years Dr. James H. Carlisle was a citizen of 
Spartanburg. In all these years no man ever found aught of 
guile in him. We knew him for what he was — a man of the 
New Testament who forgot himself in loving service for 
others. In the classroom and in the familiar study in the old 
house in the Wofiford pines he taught us and our children the 
high virtues of the life that really counts; and from pulpit 
and platform he spoke to us as a community like a prophet 
of old, holding us steady to ideals of God and righteousness. 
And his word had power and authority with us because of 
the life, the character, the personality in and behind it. Sim- 
ply, greatly, nobly, humbly he lived in single-hearted devoted- 
ness to whatsoever things are honest and true and just and 
pure and of good report. And the radiant illustration he gave 
us of the abiding beauty of these high things of the moral 
life ever appealed to what in us was noblest; and we know 
that the richest asset of this community is to be found in the 
moral tone conferred by his influence and the inspiration of 
his example. In his lifetime we honored ourselves by calling 
him our foremost citizen; and he was this because we knew 
him to be the wisest, the best, the most loving, the most lov- 
able man we had ever known, the friend of all men and women 
and little children, of whatever rank or class or color, and the 
disinterested helper in every righteous and worthy cause. 
Therefore be it 

Resolved: i. That in the passing of Dr. Carlisle's bodily 
presence from among us this community suffers a profound 
sense of sorrow for what to us is a loss that cannot be 
measured. 

2. That no words are adequate to express our debt of 
gratitude for the potent influence of his example and the 
abiding inspiration of his life and character. 

3. That we cherish as a precious memory the greatness, 
the goodness, the nobility, the inestimable service of this 
teacher and friend of us all, who by word and deed ever held 
before us the loftiest ideals of right living. 

Dr. Carlisle occupies a unique position in the 
history of South Carolina by virtue of the fact that 



Dr. Carlisle as a Citizen. 67 

he was one of the signers of the famous Ordinance 
of Secession. Perhaps it is due his memory to pre- 
sent in this connection the setting of this incident in 
his life in order that his act may be understood 
properly and his motive construed righteously. 

The Articles of Confederation, entitled originally 
"An Act of Confederation of the United States of 
America," were adopted in the Congress held at 
Philadelphia, Pa., July 9, 1776. The second article 
of this Act of Confederation reads as follows: 
"Each State retains its sovereignty, freedom, and 
independence and every power, jurisdiction, and 
right which is not by this confederation expressly 
delegated to the United States in Congress assem- 
bled." Henry Laurens, William Henry Drayton, 
John Matthews, Richard Hutson, and Thomas Hey- 
ward, Jr., were the delegates from South Carolina 
and signed the document "on the part and behalf of 
the State of South Carolina." In the early part of 
the convention which formed the Constitution of the 
United States a motion was made to confer upon 
Congress the power to call forth the force of the 
Union against any member of the Union failing 
to fulfill its duties under the articles thereof. When 
the motion was being considered, Mr. Madison said : 
"A union of the States containing such an Ingredi- 
ent seems to provide for Its own destruction. The 
use of force against a State would look more like a 
declaration of war than an Infliction of punishment 
and would probably be considered by the party at- 



68 Carlisle Memorial Volume. 

tacked as a dissolution of all previous compacts by 
which it might be bound." The proposition was 
rejected and was never again revived. Mr. Jeffer- 
son Davis, in his "Rise and Fall of the Confederate 
Government," says: 

Nullification and secession are often erroneously treated as 
if they were one and the same thing. It is true that both 
ideas spring from the sovereign right of a State to interpose 
for the protection of its own people, but they are altogether 
unlike as to both their extent and the character of the means 
to be employed. The first was a temporary expedient, intend- 
ing to restrain action until the question at issue could be 
submitted to a convention of the States. It was a remedy 
which its supporters sought to apply within the Union, a 
means to avoid the last resort — separation. If the application 
for a convention should fail, or if the States making it should 
suffer an adverse decision, the advocates of that remedy have 
not revealed what they proposed as the next step, supposing 
the infraction of the compact to have been of that character 
which, according to Mr. Webster, dissolved it. 

Secession, on the other hand, was the assertion of the 
inalienable right of a people to change their government when- 
ever it ceased to fulfill the purposes for which it was or- 
dained and established. Under our form of government and 
the cardinal principles upon which it was founded it should 
have been a peaceful remedy. The withdrawal of a State 
from a league has no revolutionary or insurrectionary char- 
acteristic. The government of the State remains unchanged 
as to all internal affairs. It is only its external or confeder- 
ate relations that are altered. To term this action of a 
sovereign a "rebellion" is a gross abuse of language. So is 
the flippant phrase which speaks of it as an appeal to "the 
arbitrament of the sword." In the late contest, in particular, 
there was no appeal by the seceding States to the arbitrament 
of arms. There was, on their part, no invitation nor provo- 
cation to war. They stood in an attitude of self-defense and 
were attacked for merely exercising a right guaranteed by 



Dr. Carlisle as a Citisen. 69 

the original terms of the compact. They neither tendered 
nor accepted any challenge to the wager of battle. The man 
who defends his house against attack cannot with any propri- 
ety be said to have submitted the question of his right to it 
to the arbitrament of arms. 

Two moral obligations or restrictions upon a seceding State 
certainly exist : In the first place, not to break up the partner- 
ship without good and sufficient cause; and, in the second 
place, to make an equitable settlement with former associates 
and, as far as may be, to avoid the infliction of loss or damage 
upon any of them. Neither of these obligations was violated 
or neglected by the Southern States in their secession. 

The decade prior to the year i860 was character- 
ized by fierce political strife, with its cleavage for 
the most part along sectional lines. The main issue 
was State rights, and slavery was the occasion of 
the struggle. The storm cloud which had been hov- 
ering over the nation for a score of years broke in 
all its fury during the Presidential campaign of 
i860. The election of Abraham Lincoln to the 
Presidency by the nonslaveholding States led to 
the general conviction in the South that the hostility 
on the part of these States was evidence of their 
disregard of obligations and that the laws of the 
general government had ceased to effect the object 
of the Constitution. In most of the Northern States 
a fugitive from any of the Southern States was 
discharged from service in direct violation of the 
original compact between the States. Consequently 
the general opinion in the South was that the State 
was accordingly released from her obligation be- 
cause the ends for which the government was insti- 



70 Carlisle Memorial Volume. 

tuted were defeated. Such was the prevailing sen- 
timent in the South, and South CaroHna took the 
initiative in giving it forceful expression in the 
famous Secession Ordinance. 

On November 13, i860, the Legislature of South 
Carolina passed an act calling a convention of the 
people to assemble on December 17, i860, and pro- 
viding for the election of delegates to said conven- 
tion, to take place on the 6th day of December. 
These were history-making days, and events oc- 
curred with marvelous rapidity. The election of 
delegates was duly held; and just eleven days aft- 
er the election the convention met in the Baptist 
church at Columbia, S. C. Mr. D. E. Jamison was 
elected President of the convention, Mr. Benjamin 
F. Arthur was made Clerk, and Mr. John A. Inglis 
was made Chairman of the Committee on Resolu- 
tions. Owing to a rumor that there was an epidemic 
of smallpox in the city, the convention adjourned 
to meet in Charleston, S. C, on the next day. The 
convention accordingly resumed its session in St. 
Andrew's Hall, on Broad Street, Charleston, De- 
cember 18. Only two days were required for dis- 
cussion and planning; for on Thursday, December 
20, i860, the historic document known as the Ordi- 
nance of Secession was adopted by a "yea" and 
"nay" vote, and the signatures of all present were af- 
fixed thereto. The wildest enthusiasm prevailed in 
the Hall; and the great crowds in waiting on the 
outside, hearing of the adoption of the paper, caught 



Dr. Carlisle as a Citizen. 71 

up the enthusiastic cry, and soon the streets of the 
entire city were echoing with the news of South 
CaroHna's new Declaration of Independence. Fol- 
lowing is the Ordinance of Secession as passed by 
that convention: 

SECESSION. 
An Ordinance 

TO DISSOLVE THE UNION BETWEEN THE StaTE OF SoUTH CARO- 
LINA AND OTHER StATES UNITED WITH HER UNDER THE COM- 
PACT ENTITLED "tHE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES OF 

America." 

We, the people of the State of South Carolina, in conven- 
tion assembled, do declare and ordain, and it is hereby declared 
and ordained. 

That the ordinance adopted by us in convention on the 
twenty-third day of May, in the year of our Lord one thou- 
sand seven hundred and eighty-eight, whereby the Constitu- 
tion of the United States of America was ratified and also all 
acts and parts of acts of the General Assembly of this State 
ratifying amendments of the said Constitution are hereby 
repealed, and that the union now existing between South 
Carolina and other States under the name of the United 
States of America is hereby dissolved. 

Signed : D. F. Jamison, delegate from Barnwell and Presi- 
dent of Convention; Thomas Chiles Perrin, J. N. Whitner, 
John M. Timmons, James C. Furman, Edward Noble, James 
L. Orr, Francis Hugh Wardlaw, P. E. Duncan, J. H. Wilson, 
J. P. Reed, R. G. M. Dunavant, W. K. Easley, Thomas Thomp- 
son, R. F. Simpson, James Parsons Carroll, James Harrison, 
David Lewis Wardlaw, W. Pinckney Shingler, William Gregg, 
W. H. Campbell, Benjamin Franklin Mauldin, Peter B. Bon- 
neau, Andrew J. Hammond, John McKee, Lewis Malone Ayer, 
Jr., John P. Richardson, James Tompkins, Thomas W. Moore, 
W. Peronneau Finley, John L. Manning, James C. Smyly, Rich- 
ard Woods, J. J. Brabham, John J. Ingram, John Hugh Means, 
A. Q. Dunavant, John Alfred Calhoun, Edgar W. Charles, 



^2. Carlisle Memorial Volume. 

William Strother Lyles, John A. Inglis, John Izard Middle- 
ton, Julius A. Dargan, Henry Campbell Davis, Henry Mclver, 
Benjamin E. Sessions, Isaac D. Wilson, John Buchanan, 
Stephen Jackson, H. I. Caughman, T. J. Withers, E. M. Sea- 
brook, R. W. Barnwell, John G. Geiger, James Chesnut, Jr., 
John J. Wannamaker, B. H. Rutledge, Paul Quattlebaum, 
Joseph Brevard Kershaw, Elias B. Scott, Edward McCrady, 
W. B. Rowell, Thomas W. Beaty, Joseph E. Jenkins, Francis 
J. Porcher, Chesley D. Evans, William J. Ellis, Langdon 
Cheves, T. L. Gourdin, William W. Harllee, R. L. Crawford, 
George Rhodes, John S. Palmer, A. W. Bethea, W. C. Cau- 
then, A. G. Magrath, John L. Nowell, E. W. Goodwin, D. P. 
Robinson, William Porcher Miles, John S. O'Hear, William 
D. Johnson, H. C. Young, John Townsend, John G. Landrum, 
Alex McLeod, H. W. Garlington, W. Ferguson Hutson, B. B. 
Foster, John P. Kinard, John D. Williams, W. F. De Saus- 
sure, Benjamin F. Kilgore, Robert Moorman, W. D. Watts, 
William Hopkins, James H. Carlisle, Joseph Caldwell, Thomas 
Wier, James H. Adams, Simpson Bobo, Simeon Fair, Joseph 
Daniel Pope, Maxey Gregg, William Curtis, Thomas Worth 
Glover, C. P. Brown, John H. Kinsler, H. D. Green, Lawrence 
M. Keitt, John M. Shingler, Ephraim M. Clarke, Matthew P. 
Mayes, Donald Rowe Barton, Daniel DuPre, Alex H. Brown, 
Thomas Reese English, Sr., William Hunter, A. Mazyck, E. 
S. P. Bellinger, Albertus Chambers Spain, Andrew F. Lewis, 
William Cain, Merrick E. Carn, Robert N. Gourdin, Robert 
A. Thompson, P. G. Snowden, E. R. Henderson, H. W, Con- 
nor, William S. Grisham, George W. Seabrook, Peter Stokes, 
Theodore D. Wagner, John Maxwell, John Jenkins, Daniel 
Find, R. Barnwell Rhett, John E. Frampton, R. J. Davant, 
David C Appleby, C. G. Memminger, Gabriel Manigault, 
John Julius Pringle Smith, Alex M. Foster, Isaac W. Hayne, 
J. S. Sims, William Blackburn Wilson, John H. Honour, 
William H. Gist, Robert T. Allison, Richard De Treville, 
James Jefiferies, Samuel Rainey, Thomas M. Hanckel, Anthony 
W. Dozier, A. Baxter Springs, A. W. Burnet, John G. Pressley, 
A. I. Barron, Thomas Y. Simons, R. C. Logan, A. T. Darby, 
L. W. Spratt, Francis S. Parker, Williams Middleton, F. D. 



Dr. Carlisle as a Citizen. 73 

Richardson, Benjamin Faneuil Dunkin, J. M. Gadberry, Sam- 
uel Taylor Atkinson, Benjamin W. Lawton, E. M. Seabrook. 
Attest: Benjamin F. Arthur, Clerk of the Convention. 

Dr. Carlisle was a patriotic citizen. The motive 
that actuated him in placing his signature to the 
Ordinance of Secession was the same motive that 
actuated all his subsequent activities as a citizen — 
conscientious patriotism. 

In the Library of Congress, at Washington, is a 
series of mural decorations illustrating "The Vir- 
tues"— "Fortitude," "Justice," "Patriotism," "Tem- 
perance," "Prudence," "Industry," and "Concord." 
The one representing patriotism is the figure of a 
woman about five and one-half feet high, clad in 
drapery and standing out on a red background. 
She is represented as feeding an eagle, the emblem 
of America, from a golden bowl. The purpose is 
to symbolize the nourishment given by patriotism 
to the spirit of a nation. Sismondi records that a 
noble, patriotic young mother gave to a starving 
soldier the milk that her half-famished child re- 
quired and sent him, thus refreshed and strength- 
ened, to defend the walls of her beleaguered city. 

After all, there Is a close connection between 
patriotism and religion. Patriotism may be defined 
as the love of one's country or the passion which 
aims to serve one's country. Our devotion to God 
and our love for our country are kindred impulses. 
We are told that when Deborah was judge of Is- 
rael she planned a campaign against the Canaanites 



74 Carlisle Memorial Volume. 

on the north who fought under Jabin. She called 
for a brave and daring warrior, Barak, of the tribe 
of Naphtali, the closest neighbor to the enemy. 
Upon her promise to accompany him, he collected 
an army of ten thousand and proceeded to meet the 
approaching army of Jabin. After the battle Deb- 
orah broke forth in the strains of a lofty hymn of 
triumph, giving praise to God for the signal victo- 
ries that had attended their efforts. However, she 
kept her highest eulogies for the tribes of Zebulon 
and Naphtali, saying that these were "the people 
who jeoparded their lives unto death in the high 
places in the field." 

The human heart throbs with deepest sympathy 
when reading the story of the Babylonish captivity 
of the Jews. When mockingly asked to sing their 
songs for the amusement of their captors, the lonely 
and disconsolate Jew replied: "How can I sing the 
Lord's songs in a strange land ?" And, hanging his 
harp on the willows that grew upon the banks of the 
Babylonian rivers, he exclaimed in deepest pathos: 
"If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand 
forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let 
my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth." 

To be safe and sound, patriotism must have Its 
inspiration in religion. Real patriotism Is almost 
synonymous with brotherhood. There carmot be 
real brotherhood unless it be founded on the Father- 
hood of God. So, after all, national and social per- 
manency rests upon faith in God and in the eternal 



Dr. Carlisle as a Citizen. 75 

verities. In the teaching of Jesus of Nazareth we 
have ultimate truth, and in his life all human rela- 
tions are illustrated. His system Is a great ocean 
of truth whose waters bathe the shores of every 
continent and island of human life and find their 
way Into every inlet and craggy nook of human 
need. 

The Word of God is the Magna Charta of our 
liberties. On the hill overlooking the bay where 
the Mayflower first cast her anchor stands an elo- 
quent monument, which some one has pronounced 
at once "a miracle, a parable, and a prophecy — a 
miracle of artistic skill, a parable of Christian civ- 
ilization, and a prophecy of coming national glory." 
Seated on the corners of the pedestal are four fig- 
ures representing law, morality, freedom, and edu- 
cation. Far above on a lofty shaft of granite is the 
figure representing faith, with the open Bible In 
one hand and the index finger of the other pointing 
away to the throne of God. How sublime is this 
conception! Such must ever be the ideals of the 
patriotism that is to preserve national life and char- 
acter. 

Real patriotism Is prospective as well as retro- 
spective. We usually associate it with devotion to 
the flag and the commemoration of the deeds of our 
heroes. The higher patriotism seeks to right the 
wrongs that afflict our people, to elevate all human 
lives, and to alleviate all human suffering. There 
are gigantic evils that infest our land, and we are 



76 Carlisle Memorial Volume. 

called to a truceless war of extermination. There 
is the giant of illiteracy. South Carolina occupies 
an unenviable position from the standpoint of edu- 
cation. There are literally thousands of our people 
who can neither read nor write. The hope of de- 
mocracy lies in the education of our citizenship. 
The commonwealth will never be safe while such 
vast numbers of our people remain uneducated. 
The great peril of the State is not the demagogue, 
but the ignorant masses back of him whose gulli- 
bility makes him possible. If our people are to 
enjoy the benefits of freedom, if the people are to 
have In their hands the destiny of the institutions 
of the State, if they are to fulfill their mission in 
the world, they must be educated. And there is 
the social evil. Our energies must be enlisted in 
the interest of the campaign against the double 
standard of morality, and the "white life for two" 
must be our battle cry. The double standard of 
morality is one of the greatest perils of the modern 
home, and it imperils our whole social fabric. 

Then there is the gigantic gambling evil. It Is 
like a great river running Into a deep cesspool of 
iniquity that is ever cursing humanity by sending 
up its stench of moral miasma from stagnant and 
putrid waters, breeding disease and death In the 
life of peoples and nations. Running Into this river 
are many tributaries which swell the deadly current 
ere It empties itself Into Its direful destination. 
There is governmental gambling for revenue, gam- 



Dr. Carlisle as a Citizen. 77 

bling in society for amusement, gambling in sports, 
gambling in business for the increase of wealth, and 
gambling in benevolent circles for purposes of so- 
called charity. In fact, this evil seems to have in- 
sinuated itself into every department of our social, 
civic, and commercial life. 

Finally, there is the liquor fiend. If patriotism 
means love of our country, if it means the love of 
our fellow beings, then let us wage a relentless war- 
fare against this deadly enemy of our people. In 
all ages of the world and among all the nations of 
the earth intemperance has occupied a foremost 
place among the forces that have operated in the 
disorganization of nations, the overthrow of king- 
doms, and the destruction of empires. Intemper- 
ance is not only universal in that it affects all na- 
tions, but in its effects upon the individual as well. 
It affects him in mind, body, and spirit. It injures 
him in body by burning out the tissues, thus ren- 
dering the victim the easy prey of deadly disease. 
It injures the mind by blunting the perceptive pow- 
ers, thus disqualifying him for making the acute 
distinctions between right and wrong, truth and 
error, righteousness and iniquity. It injures him 
in spirit by lowering the moral tone, degrading the 
spiritual nature, and weakening his higher powers, 
thus rendering him incapable of living in touch with 
the eternal realm or of holding fellowship with the 
divine. Thank God we are fighting a winning bat- 
tle against King Alcohol ! The Church, the school, 



78 Carlisle Memorial Volume. 

and the State have marshaled their combined forces 
for a war of extermination. The triple alliance is 
bound to win. 

Dr. Carlisle was a Christian citizen. His simple 
faith in God and his sincere desire to emulate the 
Man of Galilee produced a high type of citizenship. 
Jesus taught the highest type of citizenship. This 
he did by inculcating the elements of the loftiest 
character. In laying down the principles to be in- 
corporated in the character of those who aspired to 
citizenship in his kingdom, he said: 

"Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom 
of heaven. Blessed are they that mourn : for they shall be 
comforted. Blessed are the meek : for they shall inherit the 
earth. Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after right- 
eousness : for they shall be filled. Blessed are the merciful : 
for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart: 
for they shall see God. Blessed are they which are persecuted 
for righteousness' sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 
Blessed are ye when men shall revile you, and persecute you, 
and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my 
sake. Rejoice, and be exceeding glad : for great is your reward 
in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were be- 
fore you." 

Jesus taught the highest type of citizenship by 
his great doctrine of brotherhood. He planned for 
a brotherhood that reaches beyond national lines, a 
citizenship of the world in the presence of which 
there is neither Jew nor Greek, barbarian, Scythian, 
bond or free, but only manhood with all Its rights 
and wrongs. The spirit of the Good Samaritan 
must give tone to all our relationships. He also 



Dr. Carlisle as a Citizen. 79 

taught the highest type of citizenship by his doc- 
trine of service. The three great laws of life are 
the law of love, the law of sacrifice, and the law of 
service. The standard of human greatness is serv- 
ice. We serve only as we sacrifice for others; we 
sacrifice for others only as we love them. 

Dr. Carlisle incorporated all these laws in his own 
character and illustrated them in his own life, yet 
he never boasted of his moral or spiritual attain- 
ments. He was South Carolina's greatest citizen; 
but if he ever entertained such a thought about 
himself, no one ever suspected it. His citizenship 
was Inspiring and enduring. 

In December, 1850, Benjamin Wofford died. 
He left by his will one hundred thousand dollars 
"for the purpose of establishing and endowing a 
college for literary, classical, and scientific educa- 
tion, to be located in his native district and to be 
under the control and management of the Confer- 
ence of the Methodist Episcopal Church of his na- 
tive State." A charter was duly secured; and the 
trustees held their first meeting to organize under it 
at Newberry November 24, 1853. The trustees at 
this meeting elected the following faculty: W. M. 
Wightman, D.D., President; Rev. Albert M. Shipp, 
A.M., Professor of English Literature; David Dun- 
can, A.M., Professor of Ancient Languages; James 
H. Carlisle, A.M., Professor of Mathematics; and 
Warren DuPre, A.M., Professor of Natural Sci- 
ence. Thus was established the Institution which 



8o Carlisle Memorial Volume. 

was destined to be the center of the intellectual life 
of South Carolina Methodism and which was to be 
a potent influence in the production of the highest 
type of citizenship for the Palmetto Commonwealth. 

From 1854 the history of Wofford College was 
largely determined by James H. Carlisle. In 1875 
he was elected President of the institution. At dif- 
ferent times he taught mathematics, astronomy, 
ethics, civics, and the English Bible. He was more 
thoroughly conversant with South Carolina history 
than any other man. He was the author of an 
excellent textbook on astronomy entitled "The 
Young Astronomer." Time and again flattering 
offers from other institutions were made to this 
prince of educators, but to all of them he ever gave 
a courteous refusal, preferring to serve that insti- 
tution of his Church to which he consecrated his 
lofty character and resplendent abilities. 

Sometime ago a Presbyterian minister, himself 
a college president and an educator of no mean 
ability, said to me: "Why is it that all Wofford 
men are so wildly enthusiastic over Dr. Carlisle?" 
I replied by saying that I never stood in his pres- 
ence without feeling deep down in my soul a deter- 
mination to be a man. It is the admiration and 
homage instinctively paid to imperial personality. 

A distinguished Wofford graduate who has trav- 
eled extensively and who has been permitted to visit 
kings and emperors is said to have remarked that 
he was unable to understand why these potentates 



Dr. Carlisle as a Citizen. 8i 

made no more impression upon him than they did. 
His final solution was that he had lived four years 
with James H. Carlisle and that in all his travels 
he had found nowhere a man equal in personal char- 
acter to Wofford's idolized President, 

The anniversary of Dr. Carlisle's birthday is a 
great occasion at Wofford College and in the entire 
city of Spartanburg, the Athens of South Carolina. 
Sometimes the celebration is characterized by touch- 
ing incidents. A few years ago one of the college 
boys, presenting the beloved President with a token 
of love and esteem, said : 

Dr. Carlisle, you know how much the students of Wofford 
College and the Fitting School love you. You know that every 
one of us has a place set aside in his heart that is dedicated to 
you. I need not remind you of that. My purpose and privilege 
this morning is to present to you this cane, a token of remem- 
brance from these your boys on this your birthday. Read 
closely, Doctor, and you will find beneath the inscription on 
this cane some unwritten words which will tell you of our 
love and appreciation. 

In reply the good Doctor said : 

If I could make a speech under such circumstances as these, 
you would think less of me, and I should think less of myself. 
A few days ago, while walking across the campus, I recalled 
that sixty years ago I graduated. In that cemetery lie some 
of my colleagues of the years that are gone. A few years at 
most, and I shall be lying with them. In the years to come 
some old Wofford boy may visit the spot and, it may be, pull 
away the weeds. If he shall say as he stands there, "He al- 
ways meant to do me good," I think I shall rest as peacefully 
as if I were lying in Westminster Abbey. 

6 



82 Carlisle Memorial Volume. 

It is impossible to describe the occasion. As Dr. 
Carlisle resumed his seat, men and boys were weep- 
ing tears of gratitude for the life that meant so 
much to them. Dr. Henry N. Snyder then arose 
and said: 

We are getting ready to celebrate fifty years of history. 
As we look at what Wofford College has been and is, we must 
admit that there are many other institutions richer in material 
equipment and endowment. But none of them have had Dr. 
Carlisle, and in the fifty years of the great life that he has 
poured into the college we count ourselves the richest of them 
all. The endowment of his lofty character and inspiring ex- 
ample is ours, and the faculty desire to set aside this day that 
they and the students of the college may think with loving 
gratitude and high appreciation and deep reverence of what this 
Christian scholar and princely gentleman has been and is to us. 
In doing this we honor ourselves, not him, and we beg that he 
accept this poor tribute as but an inadequate expression of our 
love. 

At four o'clock that afternoon more than a hun- 
dred of the leading business men of the city left 
their stores and offices and marched to his residence 
to bear testimony of their love and admiration. 
Hon. S. J. Simpson was spokesman. Addressing 
the honored educator, he said : 

Dr. Carlisle, these, your neighbors and friends, learned this 
morning that you to-day completed your seventy-ninth year; 
and they have come to extend to you their heartiest congratu- 
lations and to testify to the love and esteem that they, in com- 
mon with all the people of this community, of every name and 
age, have for you. For many years your name, because of the 
distinguished ability, the exalted character, the self-denying 
service to others, and the Christian humility that made it great, 



Dr. Carlisle as a Citizen. 83 

has been an inspiration to old and young alike and an impelling 
incentive to higher living wherever it has been known. Let 
me express the hope for myself and for these and all our 
people that He who doeth all things well may grant you many 
years of service to Him and to your fellow men and during 
these years all the comforts and pleasures you so richly de- 
serve. 

Bishop Candler once said that he would rather 
his boy would simply go into a room where Dr. 
Carlisle's old coat was hung up than to be under 
the real tuition of many a so-called great educator,- 

Since the days of the great Teacher of Galilee 
the world has had no clearer or more convincing 
illustration of the power of personality in teaching 
than that afforded in the record of James H. Car- 
lisle. The prime conception of modern education is 
the personal power of the teacher. President Gar- 
field's definition of a university, "Mark Hopkins at 
one end of a log and a student at the other," may 
be an exaggeration, but in it lies the true philosophy 
of education. The true purpose of education is not 
to adorn the life with the gaudy externals of culture, 
not to render the life more valuable in the money 
market, but it is the development of character. 
What we should seek in education is not chiefly 
learning on the recipient's part nor the acceptance 
of a certain creed, but character. And this is to 
be character made, not according to any particular 
mold, but in an atmosphere of freedom and fullness. 
This is accomplished, not in lessons, not in organ- 
ization, but in the personal influence of the teacher 



84 Carlisle Memorial Volume. 

over the pupil. Character is not a matter of spon- 
taneous combustion. Spiritual activity is kindled 
by a spark from the burning heart of another. Mind 
acts upon mind, and feeling upon feeling. Enthusi- 
asm is kindled by the spark that flashes from eye 
to eye, and courage passes from the strong to the 
weak. 

The grace of humility had a perfect illustration 
in Dr. Carlisle. It is hard to realize that a man 
could be in possession of such imperial greatness 
without being conscious of it ; but if the good Doc- 
tor ever realized how great he was, his deportment 
never betrayed the thought. His extreme modesty 
sometimes rendered the situation embarrassing. 
He and the late Dr. Baer, of Charleston, were warm 
personal friends. It is said that once Dr. Carlisle 
went to the city to deliver an address upon a special 
occasion arranged by the ladies. He made one of 
his characteristic speeches. The ladies crowded 
around him after the address, overwhelming him 
with their encomiums. The modest gentleman 
stood speechless while the ladies heaped their ad- 
jectives upon him. On the way home, so the story 
goes, the speaker said to his friend Baer: "Doctor, 
what Is a man to do when he makes a plain, simple 
talk and the people are so profuse in their compli- 
ments?" The candid Dr. Baer replied: **Say noth- 
ing and look silly, as you did, Doctor." 

The honors that came to Dr. Carlisle were always 
unsought. Being modest and unassuming, the very 



Dr. Carlisle as a Citizen. 85 

idea of seeking personal honor seemed utterly for- 
eign to his noble nature. He was elected a mem- 
ber of the first General Conference of his Church 
of which laymen were members and was elected to 
each succeeding one as long as he felt able to go. 
He was a delegate from his Church to several Ecu- 
menical Conferences. He was a member of the Se- 
cession Convention, signing the famous Ordinance. 
He was a Representative in the last Confederate 
Legislature, 1863-64. These were the first and only 
political offices he held, though time and again he 
had been urged to accept positions of honor and 
trust in the State and nation. 

Dr. Carlisle was a man of deep spirituality. The 
secret of his great strength of character lay in his 
realization of eternal verities. SpirituaHty is the 
consciousness of the Divine Presence. The spiritual 
man is the man filled with a sense of the presence 
of God and of the force of spiritual laws here and 
now, convinced of an immediate and conscious rela- 
tion between himself and God. Dr. Carlisle was a 
living exponent of spiritual truth. No man could 
come in personal touch with him without acknowl- 
edging the reality of the Christian religion. It Is 
said of Fenelon that he had such communion with 
God that his very face shone. Lord Peterborough, 
a skeptic, was obliged to spend the night with him 
at an Inn. In the morning he rushed away, saying: 
"If I stay another night with that man, I shall be 
a Christian in spite of myself." So Wofford's 



86 Carlisle Memorial Volume. 

adored President was ever a spiritual magnet, draw- 
ing out the highest and noblest In the young men 
who came under his influence. His stately form, 
his graceful movement, his loving yet firm voice, 
and his benign face blended in an imperative call to 
young manhood that found a response in every 
heart that knew him. Such a character stands as a 
mighty bulwark, resisting the encroachments of the 
tides of commercialism and materialism beating in 
upon us. The day may come when the swelling 
tides may break over and flood the sacred spot where 
he lived ; but his spirit will still cry from the depths, 
and his memory will still call to the highest. 

At the age of thirty-one Sir Christopher Wren, 
the great architect, was commissioned to rebuild 
St. Paul's Cathedral. His task was completed 
when he was sixty. It is said that when he became 
old and feeble he asked to be carried once a year 
to see the building. Over the north of the cathedral 
is his memorial tablet bearing that famous Latin 
inscription, "Lector, si monumentum requiris, cir- 
cumspice" ("Reader, If you would behold his mon- 
ument, look about you"). If you seek the monu- 
ment of Dr. Carlisle, look about you in Church and 
State and see the mighty host of Wofford's men of 
sterling worth whose lives are a benediction to the 
nation, and you will find his enduring memorial. 

"Sunset and evening star, 

And one clear call for me ! 
And may there be no moaning of the bar 
When I put out to sea. 



Dr. Carlisle as a Citizen. 87 

But such a tide as moving seems asleep, 

Too full for sound and foam, 
iWhen that which drew from out the boundless deep 

Turns again home. 

Twilight and evening bell, 

And after that the dark; 
And may there be no sadness of farewell 

When I embark. 

For though from out our bourne of Time and Place 

The flood may bear me far, 
I hope to see my Pilot face to face 

When I have crossed the bar." 



CHAPTER IV. 
The Wofford Chapel Hour. 



CHAPTER IV. 
The Wofford Chapel Hour. 

BY DR. HENRY NELSON SNYDER, PRESIDENT WOFFORD COLLEGE. 

When Dr. James H. Carlisle's students heard 
him make a public address, they usually came away 
with the feeling that, while the address was a good 
one, such as perhaps nobody but Dr. Carlisle himself 
could make, it did not somehow represent the Doc- 
tor at his best. "His best" they heard from the 
rostrum in the old chapel when they gathered for 
the short religious services at the beginning of the 
day's work. And they were right in their estimate. 
The college rostrum was his throne of power; and, 
however great his utterances might be on set occa- 
sions before the general public, his ten-minute talks 
to "his boys" had a virtue of intimate appeal and a 
power of permanent influence that his other ad- 
dresses did not possess. 

In the first place, his students felt that he was 
talking directly to each of them personally, and 
they knew that the talk grew out of a specific knowl- 
edge of their lives and was warm with the passion 
to help them find their own best and apply it. In 
the next place, in their daily contact in the class- 
room, on the campus, and in his study, they realized 
the essential greatness of his personality and the 
high spiritual quality of his character. The result 

(91) 



92 Carlisle Memorial Volume. 

was that when he spoke in words from the rostrum 
there also spoke with a power stronger than that of 
mere words the greatness of his personahty and the 
quality of his character. This revelation of himself 
he seemed not fully to make anywhere else than on 
the familiar rostrum. Then, too, when he addressed 
them he seemed in his life and person as he stood 
before them the very incarnation of the ideals he 
presented in such searching power of appeal and in 
such a vivid, moving quality of phrasing. 

His large, imposing figure, gray hair and beard, 
an eye that softened or flamed according to the 
emotion, a rare impressiveness of gesture and bodily 
carriage, and a voice wonderfully vibrant not only 
with the meaning of his message in all its shades of 
thought and feeling, but also with the living pres- 
ence of his whole great personality — these are the 
things his students remember when they have for- 
gotten his words. Indeed, to them these his words 
seem strangely pallid, remote echoes of what they 
actually heard, until they restore in the imagination 
the living presence of the man as he spoke them. 

His students also recall that his method was not 
to take a subject and develop it logically, with care- 
ful regard to its intellectual relationships. It is to 
be doubted whether any one of them can really re- 
member any particular line of thought or the whole 
of any address he ever made from the college ros- 
trum. What they remember is a single paragraph 
embodying but one idea or an unforgettable sen- 



The Wojford Chapel Hour. 93 

tence that awoke aspirations that should never sleep 
again. They recall, too, that the phrasing was so 
simple, the illustrative element so clear, and the 
application so inevitable that the youngest freshman 
understood the meaning and caught something of its 
stirring appeal. 

But all this is merely to say that when we put into 
print these sentences and paragraphs we are leaving 
out that which gave them so much of their meaning 
— Dr. Carlisle himself. For example, here are some 
sentences that only begin to take on their power of 
appeal when we recall the man as he uttered them — 
uttered them in such a way that they went home 
with a rare impressiveness : 

Onerous duties frequently done soon sweeten into the joys 
of high privilege. 

To be the roommate at college of a low, vile blackguard is 
a dear price to pay even for an education. 

Three men commit a crime. Each is guilty of the whole of 
it. There are no vulgar fractions in sin. 

In almost every case a young man fixes in college the two 
points of the straight line that determines the direction of his 
after life. 

Character and scholarship are too close together for a 
young man to build up the one and at the same time tear down 
the other. 

There is danger that the colleges are turning out every 
year accomplished tramps, with Latin diplomas in their hands, 
to swell the vast and increasing army which must either beg or 
steal. 

One may conceal some crime from the policeman, the gov- 
ernor, the President. Between him and them it is somewhat 
of an equal contest ; at least it is man to man. But woe to 
him that enters into a contest with his Maker! 



94 Carlisle Memorial Volume. 

If this country is ever going to ruin, it will not be from 
lack of Greek, Latin, and mathematics, but from lack of a 
basis of honest character. 

When character once begins to disintegrate, there is no 
telling just where the breaking will show itself. 

An insult is never an excuse for taking human life. Time 
will cure the wound of the insult, but will only deepen the 
stain of the blood. 

There are two classes of college students that cannot afford 
to spend much money — those who have worked hard and made 
their own money and those for whom somebody else has 
worked hard and made money. 

The management of that perplexing and delicate matter of 
money is rightfully the invariable test of character, for it is 
at this point that scholar and sage and poet and schoolboy 
must touch common life and bear its strain, 

A man may be able to tell in six languages why he cannot 
pay his debt; but the debt, if ever paid, is paid in solid, ev- 
erj'day American gold and silver and greenbacks. 

While you are planning to spend a dollar foolishly, your 
parents are planning how to save a dollar to keep you in 
college. 

As I read these detached sentences over, I am 
aware that there is something missing and that only 
Dr. Carlisle's own students can supply what is miss- 
ing — the Doctor himself. After the lapse of years 
they will go back to that chapel hour in the old col- 
lege when they found their best manhood, not only 
because of such sentiments as these, but also because 
of the presence of his character in them. Even yet 
those of us who heard them may be helped by hear- 
ing them again in memory just as he uttered them. 
And it may be that echoing out of those old days the 
following, calling to mind the great teacher, will 



The Wofford Chapel Hour. 95 

quicken our moral energies afresh for the tasks and 
duties of the new day in which we are now living: 

There are very few fears for the young man when the 
simple faith of his childhood seems to be shaken by the trade 
winds of a critical attitude or by the gusts of earnest inquiry 
or even by a cyclone of ardent doubt, provided he keep the 
foundations of his moral character firm and strong. 

When a young man begins to drink, the trouble is not that 
he will become a drunkard. But I have fears of something 
far worse. Society and home training have so frowned on 
drinking that every step a young man takes in that direction 
is an act of deception. And so character is weakened at its 
most vital point, and he becomes a liar instead of a drunkard 
or more probably both. 

The State Legislature has about ten insignificant places to 
offer, paying from forty to sixty dollars. There are four 
hundred young men and young women applying for these 
positions, which last for only about six weeks. Is it possible 
that a considerable number of young men are finding in life 
no fixed positions for which they are thoroughly prepared, 
but are floating about in that vast mass which pauperizes 
society and enriches jails? At any rate, I have a faith, as 
strong as my faith in the providence of God, that society al- 
ways has a proper place for that young man who can pay his 
way in force and integrity of character. 

So many young men, after a college course in which integ- 
rity has been shattered and character tarnished, write to me 
for recommendations to responsible positions, implying that 
a word from me can supply what they had not and what they 
did their best to destroy, or else implying that the higher 
qualities of character and conduct had grown up in them, as 
Jonah's gourd, in a night. Not so ! Not so ! Will you never 
learn that the high matters of conduct and character are not 
the fungus growth of a night, of two nights, of three nights, 
but are the results of the slow, silent processes of the years, 
renovating, purifying, strengthening, and toughening our whole 
nature through strenuous endeavor? 

Thomas Carlyle once said that it was not a sign of strength 



96 Carlisle Memorial Volume. 

when a man had convulsions so that it required seven men to 
hold him, but that true strength is the daily, earnest bearing 
of burdens so that we become strong under them. So the 
real student is not the one who has "convulsions" of study on 
stated occasions — examinations and such like — but he who does 
his daily duties earnestly, manfully, and thus by a gradual 
process feels himself growing and expanding under them. 

I am not talking to the educated white young man who can 
tell an outright untruth. There is nothing in him to talk to. 
You cannot raise him with a lever, because there is nothing to 
rest your lever on. Sometimes your leg or your arm "goes to 
sleep," as the saying is. It needs vigorous rubbing or a sud- 
den strong blow to wake it up. Conscience, alas ! sometimes 
also "goes to sleep" and needs a sudden strong moral shock 
to wake it up ; but the hardest sleeping conscience to wake is 
that which has been lulled by habitual lying. 

That's a wonderful phrase of Nehemiah's about consulting 
with himself. To hold a mass meeting of the powers of one's 
nature, to go into a solemn committee of the whole upon the 
state of one's self, not a committee in which the anarchy of 
one's impulses, appetites, and desires holds sway, but a commit- 
tee presided over by the sovereign will, illuminated by the 
imperial intellect, and guided by the keenly dividing dictates 
of the divine conscience — this is a high consultation with 
one's self. 

These are the kind of things we heard from Dr. 
Carlisle. Each one of us can recall others, but no- 
body that never sat before him in the Wofford chap- 
el can appreciate the full meaning of what he said 
as we can. There on that old rostrum his great 
heart and soul found utterance, and we, callow boys 
though we were, listened to such a preacher of right- 
eousness as has been rarely given to men to hear 
anywhere, and somehow, even as thoughtless boys, 
we knew it. 



CHAPTER V. 

WoFFORD College and Its President Twenty 

Years Ago. 
7 



CHAPTER V, 

WoFFORD College and Its President Twenty 

Years Ago. 

BY ROBERT A, LAW, ACSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH, UNIVERSITY 

OF TEXAS. 

Among all the American colleges which have been 
recently described for the Alcalde, not one is a de- 
nominational school, and not one is located in the 
Old South. From institutions of each kind have 
come many useful men into the service of the Uni- 
versity of Texas. To be a denominational college 
in the South does not necessarily imply the posses- 
sion of a bigoted and distorted vision of life or low 
ideals of scholarship, with the entire absence of aca- 
demic freedom. It does imply a small and possibly 
undermanned teaching staff, a correspondingly lim- 
ited body of students, and a poor equipment, espe- 
cially for the laboratories of natural science. Yet, 
in the judgment of some who know the wealthier 
universities, this meager equipment and this village, 
as it were, among college communities may well 
hold their ground in educational value if they enable 
the student to come in close contact with some large 
personality among his teachers. And almost every 
small college seems to attract to Its faculty some 
figure of the Mark Hopkins or Thomas Arnold type, 
about whom all college traditions center and to 

(99) 



lOO Carlisle Memorial Volume. 

whom all alumni devoutly pay their worship. No 
picture of such an institution is complete without the 
accompanying portrait of this man. One small col- 
lege differs from another chiefly in his individuality. 

Wofford College, at Spartanburg, S. C, long pos- 
sessed such a figure in its President, Dr. James H. 
Carlisle, Indeed, so strongly did his personality im- 
press itself on the school that it is said parents were 
accustomed to speak of sending their boys "up to 
Dr. Carlisle" instead of giving the college a local 
habitation and a name. The institution itself is 
largely the outgrowth of his educational ideas. 

Wofford is owned and controlled by the two 
Methodist Conferences of South Carolina, having 
been founded in 1854 from a bequest for the pur- 
pose left by Benjamin Wofford, a local preacher of 
that denomination. In Mr. Wofford's home town 
of Spartanburg, lying just at the foot of the Blue 
Ridge Mountains, in the extreme northern portion 
of the State, the college was located. About half 
the bequest was set aside for an endowment fund, 
which was soon swept away by investment in Con- 
federate bonds. The other half was expended in the 
purchase of a campus, perhaps three times the size 
of that owned by the University of Texas, and the 
erection of a fairly large main building, flanked by 
four or five brick residences for the professors. 
This main building is still standing. It contained, 
when I was a student some two decades since, an 
auditorium, or "chapel," seven or eight classrooms. 



Wojford College Twenty Years Ago. loi 

the college library of eight thousand volumes, lab- 
oratories of chemistry and geology, halls of the two 
literary societies, the students' "mess hall," and 
several students' sleeping rooms. Except for the 
professors' homes already mentioned, eight or ten 
cottage dormitories, mostly rented to fraternities, a 
small building devoted to the preparatory depart- 
ment, and, in my senior year, a frame gymnasium, 
this main building housed the entire college plant. 

Of its one hundred and fifty students, a fair pro- 
portion were preparing to enter the Methodist min- 
istry, although Wofford has never possessed a the- 
ological department; many others were sons of 
Methodist preachers ; and the rest were either "town 
boys" or else probably sons of substantial Methodist 
laymen living in the rural sections of the State. 
Five or six girls, to be sure, were at one time In 
attendance ; but the college never was really coedu- 
cational and barred its doors to women after a few 
years of timid experimentation with the plan. This 
was before the days of the broadly elective system. 
Students were given an option between the study of 
Greek and that of German and French, the choice 
to be made at the beginning of the freshman year. 
No other road led to the bachelor's degree. Every 
one was expected to pursue the regular courses in 
English, mathematics, physics, chemistry, geology, 
psychology, moral science, and the Bible. If he 
failed on any one of them, he had to make up the de- 
ficiency by extra work or forfeit his degree. While 



I02 Carlisle Memorial Volume. 

compulsory attendance at church or Sunday school 
was unheard of, every student was required to at- 
tend the daily chapel exercises and once every year 
at these exercises to make a brief declamation. Woe 
to him who failed to con his "speech" diligently 
for such occasions! He who hesitated was surely 
lost amid tremendous cheering from his fellows. 

Another compulsory regulation was that every 
student should become a member of either the Cal- 
houn or the Preston Literary Society. Generally 
speaking, I believe this rule was wise and proper. 
Each society was run by the students themselves, 
with almost no suggestion from the faculty, who 
usually knew what was going on, but very rarely 
visited the meetings. The society halls were com- 
fortable, carpeted rooms, devoted solely to that pur- 
pose, were well lighted and furnished with attrac- 
tive opera chairs, and their walls were ornamented 
with many oil paintings of distinguished alumni and 
professors. The president of the society sat on a 
high platform under a canopy, and he always wore 
a black gown of the kind that South Carolina judges 
still wear on the circuit bench. Regular meetings 
were held each Friday night, beginning at seven- 
thirty o'clock and lasting frequently until midnight 
or later. Roll was called at the beginning and at 
the end of each meeting; and the fine for unex- 
cused absence from any roll call, If I remember 
aright, was fifty cents. Half the society's member- 
ship of about seventy came on duty to read essays, 



Wojford College Twenty Years Ago. 103 

to declaim, or to debate each Friday night. Thus, 
if one was not on the program at one meeting, he 
was sure to be at the next one. These duties were 
enforced; and order in the meeting was preserved 
under a rigid system of fines, which were collected 
in one way or another. Even the most timid mem- 
ber soon found it economical to perform his duty 
regularly, and before the end of his freshman year 
practically every student had gained some self-con- 
fidence in addressing the society. Both oratory and 
debate, as I realize now, were faulty in technique; 
and neither the graceful speaker nor the polished 
argument is likely to result from such training. 
Still I believe that the average Wofford graduate of 
that time would prove a readier speaker and a more 
skillful rough-and-tumble debater than the average 
male graduate of the University of Texas ; for our 
debates were largely spontaneous, and the best part 
of them always came after the question was opened 
to discussion by the house. Hence these organiza- 
tions furnished a training in the clash of opinion 
and a preparation for citizenship which, to my mind, 
are invaluable. That such literary societies seem 
everywhere to be passing away under the complex 
machinery of modern college or university admin- 
istration is a source of profound regret. 

The freedom of the individual student, once he 
satisfied the requirements about courses of study, 
daily chapel attendance, and membership in a liter- 
ary society, was greater than most students of large 



104 Carlisle Memorial Volume. 

colleges imagine. These literary societies, governed 
entirely by the students, were the centers of the so- 
cial life and, without making any ado over it, held 
numerous "democratic receptions" in their halls 
through the year without violating the well-known 
Methodist canon on the subject of dancing. We 
had no troublesome deans nor deans' regulations. If 
we were absent from class or from chapel exercise, 
we made excuse to the professor in charge or to the 
President, and our word was accepted. The habit- 
ual liar convicted himself in due time. No one was 
supposed to leave the city without the President's 
permission ; and few, I believe, ever did so. In case 
a student seriously neglected his studies or com- 
menced to sow his "wild oats," he was apt to be 
called before the President for a personal interview, 
and the Incorrigibles soon disappeared from the 
campus. Of course there were Infractions of dis- 
cipline, like the tolling of the college bell at mid- 
night ; the painting of cows belonging to the faculty ; 
a conspiracy among students whereby a hen was 
purchased and thrown into the hall of a literary 
society then in session, but soon under adjournment ; 
even cases of gambling, drunkenness, and the gross- 
er vices. But all these offenses were handled quietly 
and firmly by the President in person and seldom 
even by other members of the faculty. 

Intercollegiate athletic contests were conditioned 
along the same simple lines. As a rule, we had no 
coaches and little faculty interference In our football 



Wofford College Twenty Years Ago. 105 

and baseball games, although no man who was be- 
hind with his work on a single course was allowed to 
represent the college on any team. We played Fur- 
man (the Baptist college thirty miles away), the 
State University, and certain smaller institutions. 
In football we were generally successful; and our 
baseball team passed through several seasons with- 
out defeat, tal-cing long tours through the State, un- 
accompanied by a coach, trainer, or faculty member. 
Of course we had our own yells and songs for such 
games, but most of them were borrowed from other 
colleges and adopted with slight change. One of 
these songs I yet recall, though I do not know its 
history nor whether it is still sung: 

"In heaven above, where all is love, 
There'll be no faculty there; 
But down belovi^, where all is woe, 

The faculty, they'll be there. 
W-o-f-f-o-r-d, W-o-f-f-o-r-d, 
W-o-f-f-o-r-d. 
Hang the faculty !" 

In spite of the fervid proclamation of these senti- 
ments, we were fond of the faculty as individuals. 
Those who composed it were only seven or eight 
men, all of whom the students came to know inti- 
mately. None were specialists in the exact sense of 
the term ; and not a single one held the Ph.D. degree, 
most of them having received their complete train- 
ing at Wofford. Yet, knowing how to teach and 
how to treat individual students, they held our re- 



io6 Carlisle Memorial Volume. 

spect and confidence. Of those living yet, I cannot 
write definitely without becoming more personal 
than would befit a paper like this one. But of the 
President, already alluded to, one can speak with less 
reserve. Before he died hundreds of well-informed 
persons declared him to be the greatest living citizen 
of his State. 

James Henry Carlisle was a member of the Wof- 
ford College faculty from its foundation, in 1854, 
to his death, in 1909, and was President of the in- 
stitution for over thirty years. If you once heard 
Dr. Carlisle speak, you caught the secret of his 
greatness. Almost six feet and a half In height, 
carrying himself always erect, he had a frame well 
proportioned to his stature, a full white beard, as 
I knew him, flowing gray locks, and a countenance 
of singular strength and benignity, suggesting the 
Hebrew patriarch. When he spoke It was in clear, 
resonant tones that fairly thundered over his audi- 
ence. Though his manner was always dignified, his 
sentences had in them no Websterian periods, almost 
none of the external ornamentation that Is supposed 
to be Inborn with the Southern orator. They were 
vigorous, explicit, epigrammatic, of a kind not eas- 
ily forgotten. The content of his message was not 
profound, but simple, homely moral truth that ev- 
ery hearer could apply. The pithy diction, the apt 
illustrative incident, the seasoning of quiet humor, 
the new angle from which the truth was presented 
kept the attention of old and young. So it came to 



Wojford College Twenty Years Ago. 107 

be a matter of remark that not once or twice, but 
whenever Dr. CarHsle was announced to speak in 
his home town, Spartanburg had no auditorium 
large enough to accommodate all who came to hear 
him. His exhortations went home. "I could not 
go to the devil," remarked an old Wofford man who 
settled in the pioneer West, "because wherever I 
went I saw Dr. Carlisle's long forefinger pointing 
at me." 

As a teacher It would be unjust not to accord 
him high rank. Yet, strange as it may appear, he 
seemed, at least In his later years, not to have the 
special gift of imparting knowledge. All the stu- 
dents he met once or oftener every week, teaching 
courses In astronomy, in the English Bible, and In 
moral science — that is, Butler's "Analogy of Re- 
vealed Religion." But in none of these courses were 
examinations held or written work demanded, and 
only the more conscientious students ever made them 
subjects of serious study. The old Doctor was not 
teaching astronomy ; he was teaching men. "Well, 

Mr. B ," he would say to the boy on the front 

bench, "what point struck you in to-day's lesson?" 
Mr. B would make some general or specifx re- 
mark, which would draw from the teacher a word 
or two of comment, and then the question would be 
repeated to a second student. Thus from one-third 
to one-half the class hour would be consumed. The 
rest of the period might be devoted to conferring 
with the class on any matter that Interested the lo- 



io8 Carlisle Memorial Volmne. 

cal community; to questions on the student's indi- 
vidual reading, particularly when any had been so 
wise as to read Thomas Carlyle's "Heroes and Hero 
Worship" or Stalker's "Life of Christ"; and, espe- 
cially with the senior class, to discussion of some 
impersonal phases of college discipline. The teach- 
er's consistent purpose was to learn more about his 
pupils and to arouse the sluggish from their intel- 
lectual or moral lethargy. After all, however, I 
doubt whether Dr. Carlisle's best teaching was done 
either in the classroom or on the public platform. 
No Wofford graduate will forget many hours spent, 
whether in college or years after he left it, in "visit- 
ing the Doctor," with or without an invitation. 
Sometimes he received the caller on his well-shaded 
front porch, presenting a long vista of tall pine 
trees. More frequently he was to be seen in his 
study, which contained little furniture and almost no 
ornaments, but surrounded on all sides by crowd- 
ed bookshelves that fairly touched the ceiling. The 
conversation was apt to be extremely personal, and 
the visitor usually did his full share of the talking. 
College boys would tremblingly confess to Dr. Car- 
lisle sins that they would conceal from fathers and 
mothers. Grown men out of college many years 
would frankly answer from him questions that, 
coming from any one else, they would consider im- 
pertinent. But often the talk would flow into a 
larger channel, as the teacher possessed a keen 
knowledge of human nature, a remarkable memory 



Wofford College Twenty Years Ago. 109 

for details connected with men or with books, and 
at the same time a breadth of vision and an unfailing 
kindliness such as are seldom found in men so domi- 
nated by Puritan traits as he was. 

For example, he had cause to dislike Northerners 
— "Yankees," the North Carolina boy would term 
them. He grew up with the generation that revered 
Calhoun. As a young man he saw rise the full tide 
of sectional rancor; and in i860, against his will, 
he was chosen by the people of Spartanburg County 
to represent them in the State Secession Convention. 
Over his negative vote the Convention resolved to 
secede from the Union, but his name was signed in 
bold hand to the Ordinance of Secession. In the 
war which followed he did not actively participate ; 
but the college was practically broken up, and, with 
the people of his community, he suffered not only 
the untold horrors of war, but the far greater hor- 
rors of the Reconstruction period just afterwards. 
He lived through it all without allowing bitterness 
to enter his soul. Even of General Grant he would 
speak with a tone of admiration. Moreover, he 
was an unfailing friend of the negroes. He once 
introduced Booker Washington to a Spartanburg 
audience. He frequently voiced his disapproval of 
"Jim Crow" car laws on the ground of their in- 
justice to the negro race. His counsel on all such 
problems breathed a spirit of Christian brotherhood. 

But with one modern tendency he had little sym- 
pathy. For Dr. Carlisle the magic of numbers in an 



no Carlisle Memorial Volume. 

educational institution had no spell. Learning that 
his visitor attended an American university enroll- 
ing five thousand students, he asked: "Is there to 
be no limit to the size of our colleges?" On this 
point he was perfectly consistent. I well remember 
hearing him announce to the assembled students one 
day: "Some of the newspapers have been very kind 
in predicting an increase of attendance for Wofford 
next year, possibly reaching two hundred. Young 
gentlemen, when two hundred students enter the 
front door of Wofford College, I shall walk out of 
the back door." 

On this principle of looking after a small number 
of individuals Wofford did her work. Out of one 
class of sixteen graduates have come a Methodist 
bishop now residing in Texas, the president of the 
wealthiest college in the South Atlantic States, and 
the United States Senator who defeated Governor 
Blease. Wofford has no law department; but 
among her alumni are a United States circuit judge, 
two justices of the South Carolina Supreme Court, 
and almost half the circuit judges who have been 
elected in that State in the last two decades. Dis- 
tinguished records have been made by her alumni 
in other lines of endeavor. To-day the college has 
a larger faculty, a much larger student body, and 
far better equipment than when I knew it best. 
Probably It does better work, but It will be hard to 
convince my generation of the fact. 

Austin, Tex. 



CHAPTER VI. 

Dr. Carlisle as a Teacher. 

(Ill) 



CHAPTER VI. 
Dr. Carlisle as a Teacher. 

BY D. D. WALLACE, PH.D., PROFESSOR OF HISTORY AND ECONOMICS 

IN WOFFORD COLLEGE. 

No one can be satisfied with any account of Dr. 
Carlisle as a teacher; for the writer, if successful, 
must present perfectly that very real but very elu- 
sive thing which we call personality. The Doctor, 
after a long life of constant devotion to a great 
task, left nothing as a distinctive monument to him- 
self. His literary output was trivial for a man of 
his ability. His public addresses were not connected 
with historic or epoch-making occasions to perpet- 
uate their form. His edition, with a slight sketch, of 
a bit of the works of Roger Ascham and his tiny ele- 
mentary text, "The Young Astronomer," misrepre- 
sent rather than indicate anything of his intellectual 
resources; and his contributions to the religious 
press, particularly his "Practical Applications" of 
the lesson in the Methodist Sunday School Maga- 
zine, though of great value to the thousands of read- 
ers at the time, form no permanent or systematic 
body of writing. Indeed, one deeply Impressive les- 
son from Dr. Carlisle's life is the immense treasure 
of energy, labor, and character that Is required to 
keep our world growing, to keep the Church truly 
militant and the individual upright and active. Such 

8 (113) 



1 14 Carlisle Memorial Volume. 

work is of inestimable value, but it leaves no more 
distinctive memorial tablet to itself than the separate 
polyps of a coral reef. Dr. Carlisle was a part (and 
to those whose lives he touched the greatest single 
part) of that vast unselfish sacrifice which each gen- 
eration pays that there may be another generation 
better than ours, if possible. 

Dr. Carlisle was, above all, a teacher. With Paul 
he might have said, "This one thing I do"; not, 
**These many things I trifle with." I have never 
known a man of anything like comparable ability 
who so sedulously devoted himself to the one task 
of teaching those committed to his care. So pro- 
foundly true Is this that it is safe to say that 
none knew his best except those who sat in his 
classroom. He met public occasions with a splendid 
fitness. Few men could pack so much into a few 
winged phrases and leave an audience so thrilled 
with the sense of great thoughts worthily uttered. 
But this was never his best; for his highest inspira- 
tion was not the crowded auditorium, but the group 
of students to whom, as a perpetual generation of 
youth, he had devoted himself with a passion only 
second to that of parental affection. 

I have been impressed with the similarity between 
Dr. Carlisle and other great teachers of history, 
both as to character and method. Reverence and 
time smooth off the angles of a man and sometimes 
represent him as a softened, diluted, pale shadow of 
a real human being, crowned with a nimbus of mild 



Dr. Carlisle as a Teacher. 115 

goodness. Those thus ideaHzed have not, In truth, 
been men of such sort. They have been fully as 
good as, perhaps better than, this ; but they have been 
men of force. It is common to hear persons who 
knew only the outer boundaries of his character 
speak of Dr. Carlisle as though he were hardly more 
than a benign old man of antique, seerlike wisdom, 
loving the good and full of gentleness. An artist 
who seems to have held this idea painted his por- 
trait once. It remains as a sad affliction. The Doc- 
tor was a man, a real man, with passion, power, 
anger, and fire. His goodness, though a more im- 
portant, was not a larger part of him than his virile 
force, that would have pushed him to the front In 
any profession for which a man of his endowments 
might be fitted by temperament and talent. 

Many a student felt the scourge of his Indigna- 
tion and sometimes, as with any man of high temper 
and sensitive honor, felt It unjustly; but no man 
was more magnanimous to make amends. An il- 
lustration, related to me by one who was present, 
which occurred when the Doctor was about fifty- 
five years of age, will suffice. The Doctor had said, 
"Close your books," and begun the recitation. Soon 
he noticed a student on the back bench with head 
bent downward, looking Into his book. The Doctor 
detested any skulking meanness, dishonesty, per- 
haps, above all vices. He used to say that he always 
had hopes of a student until he found he would 
deliberately lie, and then he had nothing on which 



ii6 Carlisle Memorial Volume. 

to build. With grief and anger, indignation, or 
whatever more respectable word by which you wish 
to describe it — the boys simply said that "he was 
mad" — he raked the offending student with a ter- 
rible fire. When the Doctor was fully aroused, 
though he perfectly maintained his dignity of word, 
tone, and bearing, his harnessed emotions champed 
like war horses, well simulated by his flashing eye 
and audible breathing. When he at length paused, 
the student said calmly: "Doctor, I did not hear you 
say, 'Close your books/ " It was as though the 
man at the desk had been stunned by a blow. Ris- 
ing from his chair, with his hand extended, he 
walked to where the student sat and grasped his 
hand, saying with a feeling that made every man 
present suffer with him: "I beg your pardon ! I beg 
your pardon!" The middle-aged man who related 
this to me seemed to consider it about the greatest 
thing he ever saw the Doctor do. A powerful tem- 
per, if kept under control, is like steam in a boiler: 
it makes the engine go. Though the Doctor kept 
his spirit under absolute control, except In rare in- 
stances, no class could long remain ignorant of the 
fact that there was, nevertheless, steam In that 
boiler. 

As we have so few stories of the Doctor's boy- 
hood, this really worth-while one may be repeated 
here as illustrating the kind of stuff he was made 
of. One day when quite a little fellow he missed 
his lesson at school. The teacher wrote on his slate 



Dr. Carlisle as a Teacher. 117 

"Stupid goose" and made him show it to all the 
pupils. When he had made the rounds, the teacher, 
who much more deserved the insulting epithet than 
the child, said: "Aren't you ashamed? Stupid 
goose !" "No, I'm not," James fired back, "because 
it's a lie." What the next act of the drama was, the 
Doctor declined to say on the only occasion on which 
I heard him asked, but that makes no difference. 
What James said is much more important to us 
to-day than what the teache" did. 

Dr. Carlisle, like other men, changed from decade 
to decade. There is only apparent inconsistency, 
therefore, in the statements that he never did so 
and so or that he never spoke in such and such a 
way. In middle life he was austere as a teacher. 
It is still a tradition how he looked with an expres- 
sion beyond words at a student in geometry who, 
when sent to the board to find the center of a circle, 
approached, carefully sighted the figure, and, plac- 
ing his finger at what he judged to be about the 
proper place, answered: "I think it is about there, 
Professor." He would send a student to the board 
and leave him, absolutely without comment or assist- 
ance, to prove his proposition or to bungle through 
it until he finally surrendered in confusion. "That 
will do" was, according to the circumstances, high 
praise or mortifying condemnation. 

It was of this period of his life that the statement 
is sometimes made that Dr. Carlisle talked very lit- 
tle, but made the student talk. To the end of his 



Ii8 Carlisle Memorial Volume. 

life the Doctor possessed the faculty of drawing 
information without his companion's feeling that he 
was being pumped ; but in the last two or three dec- 
ades of his teaching he did talk a great deal, until 
in the final years the text counted for almost noth- 
ing, and the teacher, according to the purpose in his 
mind, directed the discussion over such fields as 
college life, public events, religion, or practical mo- 
rality. Though the greatest moral teacher whom 
his pupils ever knew, he would not submit to be 
called Professor of Moral Philosophy. I cannot re- 
call whether he was ever given that title in the cata- 
logue; but if so, it was smuggled in without his 
consent. It sounded too unctuous, too perfunctory, 
too pretentious, too hollow. The Doctor had a keen 
sense of humor. I remember the twinkle in his eye 
and his look of satisfaction at his not being called 
by such a title, I imagine, with which he commented 
on a professor of moral philosophy In Pennsylvania 
having burned down the college because he had been 
discharged from his position. 

Doubtless each generation of students will con- 
tinue to think that Dr. Carlisle was at his best In 
their own time; but, nevertheless, I think I have 
much to support me In saying that the fullest, ma- 
turest, most inspiring teaching of his life must have 
been In the early nineties. He was then still In his 
undiminished strength of body, elasticity of mind, 
and genial warmth of spirit. The austerity of mid- 
dle life had softened Into a something which in- 



Dr. Carlisle as a Teacher. 1 19 

spired awe without fear. Every movement was as 
prompt and decided as a military commander's, his 
step as elastic, his eye and smile as bright, and his 
voice as ringing as those of a man in his prime. 
From what men tell me who knew him earlier, there 
must have been even more of power, though perhaps 
less of benignity, in earlier decades. 

Dr. Carlisle's power was, above all, the power of 
personality. Teachers there have been who by their 
sheer intellectuality have drawn the select minds of 
their age and directed them by the force of their 
thought. The Doctor's power was not that. It was 
the direct influence of soul on soul through the 
potency of the larger, richer, nobler soul to inspire 
the best In the other. He saw, and made his pupils 
see, the glory in our common life, the awfulness of 
sin, the sacredness of human relations. His spirit- 
ual power was wonderful. Nowhere have I met its 
equal. Many a day as I sat In my alphabetical po- 
sition In the back of his classroom, and as he drew 
nearer and nearer to the secret chambers of the soul 
and made more and more Intense the consciousness 
of the divine In and near one's self, the physical 
view of classmates and classroom has swum Into 
oblivion while a luminous path united his face and 
mine. 

Though the Doctor was a master of language, as 
Is so well Illustrated by Dr. Snyder's article In this 
volume, he never, to my knowledge, indulged In 
nicely turned phrases of catchy sentences for the 



120 Carlisle Memorial Volume. 

sake of sound or fine writing. And yet he admired 
good writing and could quote it with effect, as, for 
example, Webster's period about the morning drum- 
beat daily encircling the earth with one continuous 
and unbroken strain of the martial airs of England. 
If, as some have suggested, he worked out his splen- 
did bursts of expression into their perfect form by 
careful conning and practice, he had the finest art 
that I have known of suiting the degree of passion, 
the turn of phrase, and the emphasis of voice to the 
moment of deliverv. I have heard him relate as an 
object lesson, after quoting the thrilling passage 
from Webster's Bunker Hill oration referred to 
above, Webster's answer to a friend who congratu- 
lated him upon it, particularly as it seemed to be so 
thoroughly spontaneous and unpremeditated. "No," 
replied Webster, "that thought occurred to me years 
ago as I was standing upon the ramparts of Quebec. 
I worked it over until I had it in a form to satisfy 
me. Then I laid it aside for use at the proper time. 
The occasion came to-day, and I used it." 

A man of clear mind and poetic gift who has 
frequently to say the same sort of thing is likely to 
settle into a certain fitting form of expression which 
gradually assumes an almost faultless adaptation to 
its purpose. As the rugged Norse Saga, repeated by 
minstrel from generation to generation, bringing 
out the essential and dropping the incidental, finally 
comes to us in a form beyond criticism, so I think 
Dr. Carlisle's wonderful forcefulness and effective- 



Dr. Carlisle as a Teacher. 121 

ness of speech was the natural outcome of a mind 
long carefully pondering on certain topics and work- 
ing with extraordinary clearness under the impulse 
of burning emotion. 

The Doctor drove truth home as with a sledge. 
He had, to a remarkable degree, delicacy of feeling, 
sensitiveness, and all those finer traits of mind and 
heart ; but even when touching the hearts and minds 
of his boys at these points the sense of power, 
though ever so gentle, was the principal thing. I 
cannot Imagine Dr. Carlisle painfully nursing in the 
middle voice a set of delicate, finely wrought, frag- 
ile, self-conscious little personal virtues. He was 
always manly and strong and so showed men that to 
be pure and gentle and true was strong and manly. 

Perhaps It was this splendid vigor of the Doc- 
tor's religious life, rather than Intellectual timidity, 
that kept him from entering Into questions of doubt. 
His attitude was like that of Anselm, that father of 
medieval faith and learning, who declared that his 
desire was not to believe what he could understand, 
but, as far as possible, to understand that which he 
believed. It Is the attitude alwavs of the transcen- 
dental spirit. One of the Doctor's favorite quota- 
tions was: "It Is as satisfactory to a healthy mind 
to know that there Is an explanation as to know 
what the explanation Is." It sounds like the Doc- 
tor's favorite, Augustine. Whether he got It from 
him, I am too Ignorant of Augustine to say ; but he 
got many of his most striking expressions there, as 



122 Carlisle Memorial Volume. 

I found when, to his delight, I read the old saint's 
"Confessions." "The Gospel for an Age of Doubt" 
was not the Doctor's method of helping men in their 
difficulties, but rather the gospel vigorously believed 
and faithfully lived. 

The personal touch was the Doctor's whole proc- 
ess of education. He knew every student as a fa- 
ther — much better than most fathers — and his won- 
derful memory let few of them escape in after years. 
How he could remember ! I could never get him to 
speak of any method that he had further than to 
quote an old teacher who said to him: "Your memo- 
ry is like a dog. Trust it, and it won't bite you." 
The precision and swiftness of his mental processes 
in the realms of his own talents was the despair of an 
ordinary mortal; but in some lines, such as those 
requiring mechanical ingenuity, he was apparently as 
helpless as a child. In fact, in many things that en- 
gage the interest of men — politics, social problems, 
government, and business — he seemed to practice a 
modesty and distrust of himself which prevented 
such output from the great faculties of which he 
was possessed as the world expects of one so gifted. 
The explanation, I believe, lay partly in an indispo- 
sition to systematic intellectual labor and partly in 
his absorption in moral and religious interests. 

The Doctor carried the method of the personal 
touch not only into the students' relations with him, 
but into their relations with each other. It was not 
unusual for one or two students to be detained after 



Dr. Carlisle as a Teacher. 123 

class to receive some such message as this: "Your 
friend So-and-So is falling off in his work [or 
conduct]. I am becoming uneasy about him. You 
have influence with him. Get around him and bring 
him up." 

The Doctor's chief heroes were Paul, Wesley, 
Washington, Lee, and all mothers. No man could 
equal the power with which he presented the appeal 
of mother to what is most generous in a young man's 
soul. He idealized womanhood so far that he ap- 
peared to know of no wickedness or weakness to 
the discredit of women. 

I recall an incident that illustrated the Doctor's 
habit of giving any subject most unexpectedly and 
effectively a moral and religious turn. One clear 
winter night he was pointing out to the senior class 
various stars and constellations with the sweep of 
imagination that raised one to realize something of 
the grandeur of creation. "And yet, young men," 
he said, turning his eyes from the stars to us, "not 
all of them together are worth one human soul." 
Without another word he walked into the house, and 
the hour was over. What was In another's mouth 
a stale, flat, canting commonplace was In his a burn- 
ing truth. To me the dignity and worth of the hu- 
man soul can never be cheap after that. 

Another remark that Impressed me greatly was 
made In class one day with a peculiar, quiet Inten- 
sity. "I do not see," he said, "how the existence of 
the soul In heaven can be other than a progressive 



124 Carlisle Memorial Volume. 

development of every faculty and virtue toward, but 
attaining, the perfection of the Creator." 

The Doctor's splendid, generous personality was 
finely exhibited in his relations with his faculty. 
Among the most delightful recollections of my life 
is the half hour's waiting for the whole body to 
assemble or for the taking up of business. The 
Doctor was one of the most gifted of monologists; 
and on such occasions, with his keen humor, inci- 
sive observation, and vivid narrative, he would run 
over almost everything from ante-bellum history to 
amusing personal anecdote. The great problems 
that lie at the basis of the teacher's work had his 
attention. I recall the first faculty meeting of the 
last year of his active presidency. After referring, 
with a note more suggestive of discouragement than 
I had ever heard from him, to some of the uglier 
tendencies of the times, he said: "This country will 
never go down in ruin for lack of educated, skilled 
men. It may go down for lack of moral character. 
. [Pause.] And yet our Lord knew infinitely more 
of the good and evil in the world than we. He 
knew all things, and he was no pessimist." 

The professors sometimes felt his reproof, though 
given with a skill that almost always made reply 
impossible, A professor on one occasion was des- 
canting with rather exaggerated impatience on cer- 
tain student shortcomings. *T suppose," replied the 
President somewhat sadly, "we shall never have a 
perfect body of students until we have a perfect 



Dr. Carlisle as a Teacher. 125 

faculty." The reproof was sometimes sharper and 
edged with a touch of sarcasm, as on the following 
occasion: The Doctor had evidently determined to 
stretch mercy as far as the law allowed for a rather 
broken-down sort of nondescript whose services 
were very much needed on the ball team. Falling 
into an expression that was often on his lips, he 
said: "Taking account of all the equities of the 
case, what can we do with this young man?" "But, 
Doctor," said a young professor, "this does not seem 
to be a case where equity applies. Equity is de- 
signed to relieve the manifest injustice that arises 
from the universality of law, and there are no such 
circumstances in this case. The law simply cuts this 
man off." The President was surprised. He looked 
fixedly at the professor and then repeated his ques- 
tion in about these words and with a good spice of 
feeling in his tone: "In the light of this learned and 
enlightened definition of equity, what do you think 
best to do with this case?" 

It was rare that the raps were tinged with so 
strong a color of 111 humor, but It was not rare for 
them to be quite sharp. It will be recalled that 
General Lee had a similar habit of setting down 
young officers on what he deemed proper occasion — 
all of which doubtless will be very painful to those 
good people who think that great men are made out 
of mollycoddles. 

The Doctor's method of discipline was the appli- 
cation of his one method as a teacher, the personal 



126 Carlisle Meniorial Volume. 

touch; and this might be understood either in the 
sense of touching up the offender or of deaHng with 
his case as that of a concrete individual. First came 
the personal appeal in the privacy of the President's 
study — those high bookshelves reaching to the un- 
usually high ceiling; the tall, prompt man, impres- 
sive with all the external marks of greatness; the 
treatment of the case as though it were the one mat- 
ter worth while in the world just then. If this ap- 
peal failed, it was a hard case. If necessary, report 
to the faculty followed ; and when all had failed to 
bring the prodigal to himself, his father was re- 
quested to withdraw him. In the later decades at 
least "expulsion" was a stigma never affixed to a 
young man. The Doctor's effort was to bring the 
offender to see his wrong, to repent of it, and to 
make a solemn and sincere promise of amendment. 
And, whatever the theoretical deficiencies of such a 
system or its limitations in larger institutions, it 
made Wofford Campus one hard to equal in good 
order, and a good order absolutely independent of 
any compulsion or repression. A frequent expres- 
sion of the Doctor's was: "He will find his level." 
Similar was that other: "The world is very ready 
to accept you at the valuation which you put upon 
yourself." 

Two others of his characteristics were his abhor- 
rence of mob spirit and his resentment of imperti- 
nence. One illustration of the latter arose out of 
a senior's presuming, at a public entertainment, to 



Dr. Carlisle as a Teacher. 127 

sit in the body of the audience with the young lady 
whom he had brought, instead of, after seating her, 
taking his place, according to law, with his literary 
society. The Doctor requested from the platform 
that all students take their positions with their lit- 
erary societies. Young Mr. A did not move. 

The request was repeated, somewhat more pointedly. 

Still Mr. A preferred to remain where he was. 

Few men in authority relish defiance, least of all a 

high-spirited Scotch-Irishman. "Will Mr. A ," 

said the Doctor with emphasis, "please take his seat 
with his literary society?" Mr. A did. The in- 
fraction was perhaps trivial, and its discipline was 
unpleasant ; but the rule was simple and reasonable, 
and discipline rests on certainty. The next morning 

Mr. A , who also had Irish in him, called upon 

the Doctor to ask an apology. "What ! Mr. A , 

after Wofford College has done what It has for 
you, do you presume to demand of me an apology? 

Good morning, Mr. A ! Good morning!" 

Judge Charles A. Woods says: "Dr. Carlisle 
wrote no great book ; he made no discovery ; he took 
little part In the public councils of the people ; he was 
not foremost In any department of learning; as a 
college executive he was not without faults. . . . 
It seems to me that his power came from three main 
sources: First, his character, his attaining to a sim- 
ple, unselfish life without guile, his striving humbly 
to lead his people to the highest things; . . . 
secondly, . . . the most profound optimism; 



128 Carlisle Memorial Volume. 

. . . and the third element of his power was 
eloquence." 

Surprise has often been expressed that, though 
the Doctor spoke often of the blessing of a magnum 
opus, he himself seemed to have no such definite 
task to draw out his powers. But he did have his 
magnum opus. It was to give himself wholly to 
making young men wiser and better. Even In the 
last hours it filled his mind, no longer clearly con- 
scious of its surroundings. In the dawn of one of 
the last days he asked one at his bedside: "What 
time is it?" "Six o'clock." Thinking it was the 
close instead of the beginning of the day, he re- 
plied: "The boys will have a long evening to study." 
He thought, too, that he had before him a new 
freshman class at the opening of college; and he 
spoke to them, except for a word here and there, 
as clearly and calmly as on that never-to-be-for- 
gotten meeting when each incoming class received 
his words of counsel and inspiration. 

Dr. Snyder relates that when he was coming to 
Wofford as a young professor Dr. Charles Forster 
Smith said of Dr. Carlisle: "You will find him the 
most of a New Testament man of any you have 
ever known." Such In very truth he was. Dr. 
Carlisle was great, not chiefly by nature and endow- 
ment, but by the depth and thoroughness of his 
consecration. We console ourselves that we cannot 
be as good men as he was because we are so much 
smaller. The fact Is otherwise: so few men are 



Dr. Carlisle as a Teacher. 129 

willing to pay what he gladly paid to be what he 
was in character. 

At the great community memorial service held in 
Converse College Auditorium Mr. E. L. Archer said : 
"By a man like Dr. Carlisle men may get some idea 
of what God is like." As bold as is the thought, it 
is not sacrilegious. As God gave us the supreme 
revelation of himself in Christ, so he speaks through 
a mobile character with a meaning that nothing else 
can express. A man like Dr. James H. Carlisle in- 
spires an unquestionable faith in the essential nobil- 
ity of human nature and the benevolence of God and 
his purposes. 

WoFFORD College, January 6, 1916. 

9 



CHAPTER VII. 
Tributes to Dr. Carlisle. 



CHAPTER VII. 
Tributes to Dr. Carlisle. 

I. 

Dr. Carlisle as Seen by the Students, 

BY A. W. AYERS. 

Dr. Carlisle was a friend to every one. His 
words of advice were a comfort to the forgotten 
and neglected. Oftentimes, when shadows of gloom 
were hanging low and I seemed to be alone, I pic- 
tured to myself an aged, hoary-headed person in a 
lecture room throwing out kindest words of sympa- 
thy and advice which none other than a faithful, 
true friend could have given, and thus I was forced 
to admit that I had one friend, anyway. 



BY J. K. DAVIS. 

To me Dr. Carlisle was a great, quiet, unassum- 
ing man. In his presence, in the classroom, at his 
home, and on the street one could always feel that 
he was in the presence of a man of men. "See to 
it that your roommate has a good roommate." 
These words were characteristic of him. They have 
been the most potent human influence in my life. 
From these words, spoken in his earnest and noble 
and gentle and beauteous spirit, one could not leave 
the classroom the same person as when he entered. 

(133) 



134 Carlisle Memorial Volume. 

To know him and partake of his spirit, to enter into 
his personal and higher Hfe, and to feel his interests, 
his sympathy, and his love, was in itself an educa- 
tion. Indeed, if Dr. Carlisle looked at you once, 
your only thought was: "Let my manhood be un- 
sullied, my looks be innocent, my thoughts be pure, 
my words be kind, my actions be gentle, and my 
life be Christlike." And withal my greatest im- 
pression of Dr. Carlisle was his gentle and Christ- 
like spirit, always calm and lovable, which made 
one feel that there was a man, a living, breathing, 
walking representative of Christ on earth. Help 
me to be like him ! 



BY T. E. CRANE. 

The one thing in Dr. Carlisle's life that impressed 
me most was his power of earnestness, which caused 
men to reverence him. There was always perfect 
behavior in his classroom; and no boy, however 
sinful, ever left the room without some noble 
thought to take with him. I have never left his 
presence at any time without having been deeply 
impressed with the great, earnest life of the man. 



BY HERBERT HUCKS. 

No, we shall not see him again in life. We now 
enter his classroom in sadness and look upon his 
dear old chair, knowing that never again will he sit 
there and talk to us as in days gone by. But his 



Tributes to Dr. Carlisle. 135 

influence can never die. Any college should thank 
Heaven for the priceless gift of such a life. What 
would Wofford, which stands for all that is high 
and noble, have been without Dr. Carlisle? None 
dare even guess. And God forbid that the day may 
ever dawn when the precious influence of his noble, 
peerless life shall depart from her highest ambitions 
and ideals! 

BY C. B. DAWSEY. 

Probably the deepest impression left on my mind 
from my knowledge of Dr. Carlisle was his lasting 
interest in the individual. Many times I have been 
to his study, but never without his asking me of 
my parents and giving me some interesting tract to 
send to my mother. Before allowing me to leave, 
he would always want to know something about my 
college work and what profession I expected to 
follow as a life work. Feeling his personal interest 
in this way, I could not help but have my heart 
strongly moved for the best and greatest in life. 



BY M. M. BROOKS. 

Of the many noble characteristics of Dr. Carlisle, 
the one that impressed me most was his intense in- 
terest in the spiritual welfare of young men. As he 
came into contact with them from time to time in 
his lecture room he would almost invariably dismiss 
the class with the emphatic words: "Don't forget 
the inner man." 



136 Carlisle Memorial Volume. 



BY F. MURATA. 



On that cold, dreary, and rainy October morning 
our hearts were peculiarly distressed by the sad 
news of the death of our Dr. Carlisle. A grievous 
thought, "We shall see him no more on this earth," 
took possession of our hearts. We felt as if the 
corner stone of our dear old institution had been 
taken away. Words are indeed inadequate to ex- 
press our sorrow. But, after all, he is not dead. 
We know that no death can overcome the pure, 
noble, saintly, and sacrificial life of this "grand old 
man." That stately and majestic stature is still 
walking with us on our campus. His warning voice, 
"Young men, don't drift," will linger in our ears for 
years to come. His keen and brilliant eyes are still 
flashing in our memory. No, we cannot imagine 
that he is gone. We are glad to know that his spirit 
is still with us and will be with us, teaching us to 
live that best and noblest life. 



BY HERBERT LANGFORD. 

"He that humbleth himself shall be exalted" ex- 
plains why Dr. Carlisle was a great man. With his 
rare intellect he could have become a money mag- 
nate, a great politician, or a president of some great 
university. But he preferred to serve his Maker at 
Wofford. He could have acquired riches, but he 
loved too well the boys at Wofford. He gave up all 
for us. He was our Dr. Carlisle, and we loved him. 



Tributes to Dr. Carlisle. 137 

BY R. L. MERIWETHER. 

To many now in college Dr. Carlisle was known 
personally only from those few short hours when he 
met each class. And even then, instead of a lecture 
on the deeper and graver subjects, there was a talk 
on what might be called the little things of life, the 
ways and manners and minor duties known to all, 
but neglected by so many. To those of less influence 
and regarded with little of the general reverence 
which Dr. Carlisle commanded, there is often given 
the privilege of ignoring many of these smaller 
duties without being censured ; but all knew that he 
so earnestly called attention to these things because 
of the strictness in his observance of them. So, 
while others might have given advice like this and 
been heard with indifference, when it came from 
Dr. Carlisle it could not but make an impression. 
But stronger than this impression, and what will be 
as lasting in the minds of the hearers as the broad 
principles on which these little things were based, 
was the realization of the true greatness of him who 
gave them, whom to see was a privilege and to hear 
a benediction. 

BY H. GRADY HARDIN. 

Once while talking to the junior class Dr. Car- 
lisle said: "You cannot all be eloquent, young gen- 
tlemen, but you can every one live a pure, clean, 
godly life and in that way preach to the world a 
sermon greater than any ever preached by human 



138 Carlisle Memorial Volume. 

lips." Ah! how he proved this to the world! No 
greater sermon has ever been preached than that 
one preached by the pure, clean, godly life of Dr. 
Carlisle. Scattered throughout the land are old 
WofTord men who were made to live better lives by 
the silent influence of this great man. Indeed, his 
life was great ; and it was made so, not by any elo- 
quent orations delivered nor by any great books 
written, but by the silent living of what he knew to 
be the right. The most impressive thing about his 
funeral was its simplicity. No great speech-making 
and eulogizing was needed, for his life spoke for 
itself. Surely the sermon preached by the life of 
Dr. Carlisle can never be forgotten, and its influence 
can never reach an end. 



BY F. WARREN DIBBLE. 



In Dr. Carlisle's presence one felt as If he were 
standing before some grand existence — the feeling 
was indescribable, hence I say existence. Yet this 
grandness had some peculiar magnetism which 
awakened our love. To be in his presence was to 
love him, and we realized that In loving him we 
loved the man who lived most nearly the Christ life. 
He Is not dead, but sleepeth and liveth an influence 
In the lives of those who had the high privilege of 
associating with him, and through these many are 
directed to the noblest things in life. 



Tributes to Dr. Carlisle. 139 



BY R. DE WITT GUILDS. 



One of the great moral lessons taught by Dr. 
Carlisle was that of punctuality. He taught this in 
and out of the classroom, not by words only, but by 
setting the example himself. 



BY MATTHEW S. LIVELY. 



"Our Dr. Carlisle" has left us, and Wofford will 
never be the same again. His going away left a 
vacancy on the campus which can never be filled. 
The college duties will apparently go on as they 
always have ; but something will be lacking, however 
promptly or conscientiously they are performed. 
Even the janitor cannot go about his work as he 
did before. The old bell in the tower will never 
peal forth with the same tone any more. The very 
seats before which Dr. Carlisle sat so many times 
and gave us those heart-to-heart talks brimming over 
with love and sympathy and kindness cannot appear 
as they once did. The books in the library and the 
magazines on the table will be found in their accus- 
tomed places; but for the last time those loving, 
tender, trembling hands have turned their pages and 
marked the important paragraphs. And most of 
all will his familiar face be missed at chapel and 
those striking remarks appropriately made. Tread 
softly, fellow students, for every inch of Wofford's 
campus is now hallowed ground. Every word 
which passed between his lips was filled with a 



140 Carlisle Memorial Volume. 

dynamic force. They were all good and great and 
noble. One did not leave his classroom or his pres- 
ence at any time remembering some saying which 
he could never forget. No, it was not that. But 
he somehow felt that he had just listened to a noble, 
divinely inspired man. It was that earnest face, that 
piercing eye, which would always stay with him — 
an "undefinable something." Dr. Carlisle gone? 
In body, yes; in spirit, never. Thanks to his Mak- 
er and ours, that can never be taken from us. It 
remains with us to guard us and to guide us and to 
show us the narrow way. 



BY R. LEON KEATON. 

The students of Wofford deeply feel the loss of 
our fatherly — yes, motherly — Dr. Carlisle. He was 
motherly because his tender heart was always going 
out to those whom he touched. We loved him be- 
cause he was simple, because he was true, because 
he was faithful, because he was modest, and because 
he was good. Those who sat in his classroom had 
the blessed privilege of partaking of the very nature 
of Christ. Dr. Carlisle was so full of Christ that 
when with him each knew that he was with a godly 
man. His life was made up of little things. After 
they leave this world some men live in fine build- 
ings, some In history, some in libraries, many in 
other things ; but Dr. James H. Carlisle lives in the 
hearts of men, near their souls, ever urging them on 



Tributes to Dr. Carlisle. 141 

in the rational fight for the highest, the noblest, and 
the manliest life — for God. 



BY RALPH L. NEWTON. 



In my opinion, there are two traits in Dr. Car- 
lisle's character which stand out more prominently 
than any others. In the first place, he never failed 
to point out to any one the necessity of living a 
Christian life. I well remember the first conversa- 
tion which I had with him. We did not talk five 
minutes ; but, nevertheless, he found opportunity to 
inquire concerning my spiritual condition. What 
he could do for his Master was always uppermost 
in his mind. The second characteristic in his life 
which Impressed me was his humility. He was 
admired by every one who ever knew him, but he 
never considered himself above any of his fellows. 
He never sought praise, nor did he like publicity and 
ostentation. For these things every one loved him, 
and I shall always consider It one of the great privi- 
leges of my life to have been allowed to spend three 
years on the campus with him. 



BY EARL L. KEATON. 

The sorrow of a State 
Cannot be sung or said, 

Now that its noblest son 
Lies silent, but not dead. 



142 Carlisle Memorial Volume. 

The wound that Wofford bears 
Is cut so deep, we feel 

The which no after joy 
Can ever wholly heal. 

No place on earth so sweet, 
No place in heaven so fair, 

But that this sainted soul 
Can find a lodgment there. 

His life to emulate 
Would be a high ideal, 

For it was patterned after 
The King to whom all kneel. 



BY THE PRESTON LITERARY SOCIETY. 

Whereas our Heavenly Father has seen fit, in his 
infinite wisdom, to call unto himself our most es- 
teemed and beloved honorary member, Dr. James 
H. Carlisle; and 

Whereas the members of the Preston Literary 
Society of Wofford College have suffered an ir- 
reparable loss in the death of him whose ever-glad 
words of encouragement, manly living, and lovable 
character will long live in our memory; therefore 
be it 

Resolved: i. That we extend our deepest sympa- 
thy to the bereaved family In this the loss of one so 
dear to them. 

2. That a page of our society minute book be in- 
scribed to his memory. 

3. That a copy of these resolutions be sent to the 
bereaved family and that a copy be published in the 



Tributes to Dr. Carlisle. 143 

Wofford College Journal and the Southern Chris- 
tian Advocate. 



BY LANDER COLLEGE. 

At a called meeting of the faculty and student 
body of Lander College, held at 12 m. October 21, 
1909, the following was adopted by a rising vote: 

Whereas on this the 21st day of October, 1909, Dr. James 
H. Carlisle, President Emeritus of Wofford College, has fallen 
on sleep; therefore 

Resolved by the faculty and students of Lander College: 
I. That we share with the family and Wofford College, with 
Spartanburg and South Carolina, with Methodists and all 
Christendom, in the great bereavement that has come to all by 
the death of Dr. Carlisle. 

2. That even in our sorrow we rejoice over the splendid 
life and labors of the departed and over the wide influence in 
Church and State exercised by him as he walked with God 
and moved among men. 

3. That at twelve o'clock to-day and at the hour of the 
funeral our school work be suspended, that our flag fly at half 
mast until next Tuesday, and that a representative attend the 
funeral exercises, 

4. That a copy of these resolutions be sent to the family of 
Dr. Carlisle, to Wofford College, to the Southern Christian 
Advocate, and to the Spartanburg papers. 



BY THE CARLISLE LITERARY SOCIETY. 

Whereas the Supreme Ruler of the universe," in 
his infinite wisdom, has moved from us our beloved 
Dr. James H. Carlisle ; and 

Whereas this society has the honor of bearing, 



144 Carlisle Memorial Volume. 

his name, making it highly befitting that we record 
our appreciation of him; therefore be it 

Resolved: i. That the removal of such a life from 
our midst leaves a sorrow and a wound that will be 
deeply felt by every member of this society. 

2. That the lessons he has taught and the inspiring 
example of his noble life will ever be held by us in 
grateful remembrance. 

3. That we rejoice that the Influence of the exam- 
ple of so great a life has been left to the young men 
of this entire State, and especially to those of this 
society. 

4. That a copy of these resolutions be put upon 
the records of this society and that a copy be printed 
in the Southern Christian Advocate and in the Wof- 
ford College Journal. 



BY THE CALHOUN LITERARY SOCIETY. 

Whereas our Heavenly Father on October 21,. 
1909, in his perfect wisdom, thought best to close the 
earthly life of our great teacher, Dr. James H. Car- 
lisle, and to promote him to his eternal home, where 
he will never know pain or sorrow, and where he 
can live a life far greater and grander than could 
have been possible here ; therefore be It 

Resolved: i. That we, the Calhoun Literary Soci- 
ety of Wofford College, deplore more than words 
can express the death of one so true, lovable, and 
popular with every one who knew him. Dr, Car- 



Tributes to Dr. Carlisle. 145 

lisle had a bright and cheerful disposition and was 
always generous and kind-hearted. He was a friend 
to every one who knew him, and his presence among 
us was always a delight. He has lived a pure and 
noble life, of which we all are proud. 

2. That we extend to his family our heartfelt 
sympathy in their sore bereavement. 

3. That a copy of these resolutions be placed on 
our records and that copies be sent to the family and 
to the press. 

BY THE CARLISLE LITERARY SOCIETY OF COLUMBIA COLLEGE. 

Whereas Dr. James H. Carlisle died on October 
21, 1909; and 

Whereas the Carlisle Literary Society has been 
honored by the privilege of bearing his name ; there- 
fore be it 

Resolved by this society: i. That we deeply la- 
ment his death and the loss of his direct influence 
upon students In South Carolina and upon our- 
selves as a society. 

2. That we rejoice in his rich, helpful life and in 
the life-giving influence that he has left us. 

3. That we sincerely and deeply sympathize with 
the bereaved members of his family. 

4. That a copy of these resolutions be sent to Dr. 
Carlisle's family and to the Criterion, the South- 
ern Christian Advocate, and the State for publica- 
tion. 

10 



146 Carlisle Memorial Volume. 

11. 

By Those Who Have Known Dr. Carlisle 
Personally. 

FROM ASSOCIATE JUSTICE WOODS. 

A man of power has passed from the life into 
the history of his country. His death brings deep 
sorrow to the hundreds of men who were taught 
by him and to thousands besides who loved him. 
To all men and women who aspire to the best 
things for their country it brings a solemn sense of 
loss to the cause of righteousness. 

To-day it would be best for those of us who held 
him most in love and honor to sit still and let the 
memories of his life drift through our thoughts and 
thus renew the high ideals which he helped to in- 
spire. But you ask me, as one of his old students, to 
write an appreciation of the man; and though the 
task be for me one impossible of accomplishment, I 
cannot refuse to try. 

As all know. Dr. Carlisle soon after his gradua- 
tion at South Carolina College became a teacher. 
For over sixty years he devoted all his great powers 
to that profession. He seems to have regarded his 
life as completely consecrated to that work as 
though he had taken vows before an altar. No 
vicissitudes of public disaster or personal poverty, 
no opportunities for promotion, no apparently wider 
field of usefulness could move him from his purpose 
to devote his life to trying to make men wiser and 



Tributes to Dr. Carlisle. 147 

better. Whether it required great self-control or 
self-denial for him to pursue this course, perhaps 
no one can tell ; for he was a man of Spartan sim- 
plicity and sought for himself nothing except good 
books, congenial friends, and a sense of doing 
good. 

In the living of this simple life which distin- 
guished him there were many like him in the col- 
leges of the State In the years which came just after 
the catastrophe of 1865. Indeed, the simplicity and 
purity and unbending loyalty to ideals of the men 
who taught in our small colleges in those days en- 
noble the calling to which they belonged and re- 
main as a heritage and inspiration to their coun- 
trymen. The State college was closed, the State 
Treasury was in the hands of aliens, and the people 
were in poverty. The debt of those who would nev- 
er have entered a college door but for men like Dr. 
Carlisle can never be estimated. True, the equip- 
ment was poor, and the teaching was not always by 
the best methods ; but there was daily contact with 
men who loved the best books and aspired to the 
best things In life. Among these men, Dr. Carlisle 
was preeminent in Intellect, In character, and in in- 
fluence. Dr. Charles Forster Smith, a student un- 
der him, dedicates to him a recent book in these 
words: "The best man I have ever known and the 
most potent Influence In my life." Perhaps It is 
not remarkable that one man, however eminent, 
should say that of another ; but it Is remarkable that 



148 Carlisle Memorial Volume. 

so many others should accept these words of Dr. 
Smith as expressing their own estimate and feeling. 

What was the source of this power? Dr. Carlisle 
wrote no great book; he made no great discovery; 
he took little part in the public councils of the peo- 
ple; he was not foremost in any department of 
learning; as a college executive he was not without 
faults. Varying answers to the question will be 
given. As it seems to me, his power came from 
three main sources: First, his character, his attain- 
ing to a simple, unselfish life without guile, his striv- 
ing humbly to lead his people to the highest things. 
This in a strong, aggressive man is the greatest ele- 
ment and source of power. Doubtless there are 
many other things apparently more useful and pow- 
erful; but he made good his belief that it was not 
the glittering, but the steady and white light that 
imparts life. 

To this character there was added in him the 
most profound optimism. He had unfailing faith 
that truth and virtue would in the long run prevail 
over falsehood and vice. And, what was more im- 
portant In his influence in inspiring others to strive 
for righteousness and enlightenment, he was always 
insistent on the capacity of the average man to take 
charge of his own heart and mind and elevate him- 
self. More than this, his own convictions were so 
strong on these subjects and his personal magnetism 
so great that the least aspiring could hardly come 
within this sphere of his influence without feeling 



Tributes to Dr. Carlisle. 149 

the chief end of Hfe to be the attainment of the 
highest will power and its consecration to the ac- 
quirement of knowledge and to the doing of good. 

The third element of his power was eloquence. 
I do not mean by eloquence merely brilliant expres- 
sion, polished gesture, rounded periods, or artistic 
polish. Some of these he had without effort. But 
his was the eloquence which moved the emotions too 
deeply to admit of outward demonstration, which 
carried conviction to the mind and aroused the 
whole man to the best of aspirations and possibilities. 
He who could listen and not feel that he had been 
under the influence of a great human power was in- 
deed poor in spirit. 

One scarcely dares, over the bier of a man so mod- 
est and retiring, to speak of the influence and charm 
of his social life; but I cannot refrain from one 
word. He had a personal interest in every college 
student he knew and had the rare power of inspiring 
awe and affection at the same time. He always 
remembered the men who had been at Wofford Col- 
lege and so watched their careers in college and in 
after life that he made every man know that he was 
expecting of him the best achievement of which he 
was capable. His memory was a storehouse of the 
best things in literature, of the history and traditions 
of his own people, and of reminiscences of great 
men of his own time. The charm with which he 
used these treasures in social life will not be forgot- 
ten by those who had the privilege of his friendship. 



150 Carlisle Memorial Volume. 

Yet he possessed more markedly than any other man 
I have known the spiritual holy of holies where no 
man entered with him. He was intensely religious, 
in the sense that he was a devoted Christian and 
lived in the highest spiritual atmosphere ; but he was 
a man too humble and wise to try to influence men 
by any creed except that of love and duty. 

The death of a man to whom it was given to live a 
long and full life in the blessing of others by the 
exercise of these powers should not be marked by 
gloom and sad refrains, but rather by anthems of 
praise and triumph that all his life he stood fast 
and gave strength and hope to men. We know not 
of his future beyond this life; but there can be no 
agnosticism and no skepticism that he is 

"Of those immortal dead who live again 
In minds made better by their presence : live 
In pulses stirred to generosity, 
In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn 
For miserable aims that end in self, 
In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars, 
And with their mild persistence urge man's search 
To vaster issues." 
Marion, S. C. 

SENATOR E. D. SMITH's TRIBUTE. 

Every one has to have a standard of comparison, 
and upon the perfection of that standard depends 
the proper appreciation of things compared and a 
just measurement of things measured. 

This is the reason that the students of Wofford 



Tributes to Dr. Carlisle. 151 

College have such a high sense of Intellectual, reli- 
gious, and moral character, for James H. Carlisle 
was to the student body the embodiment of a per- 
fect Christian character. His profound faith in 
God, his profound belief in Christ, together with his 
intellectual power, made him grand and awe-inspir- 
ing to the student body. Whenever he spoke to 
them on subjects relating to spiritual things or as 
touching the Deity, he did it with such sincerity and 
earnestness, such power and humility, that he gave 
the Impression that his communion with these forces 
was real, intimate, and vital. 

His everyday life, both in the classroom and out 
of It, was so earnest and consecrated that contact 
with him rebuked all that was lowest and most 
unworthy, while It Inspired a real healthy ambition 
to attain all that was best as student and man. 

I do not believe that it was possible for any one 
to be under the tutelage of James H. Carlisle or 
even to come in contact with him daily without being 
better or worse — better by having his standard of 
manhood infinitely raised and attempting to meas- 
ure up to that standard or worse by refusing to fol- 
low this higher vision. 

My feeling toward Dr. Carlisle as a student and 
since college days as a man Is hard to express. A 
profound respect for his purity, for his faith, and 
admiration for his intellectual power; a great love 
for the great Christian heart that yearned for the 
mental, moral, and spiritual uplift to young men — 



152 Carlisle Memorial Volume. 

combine all these, and the resultant Is what I feel for 
this the greatest man that South Carolina has ever 
produced. 

I am sure that the one characteristic of Dr. Car- 
lisle that drew him closer to the student body than 
anything else was his great yearning that the boy at 
college for the first time should not disappoint the 
mother and father at home making such sacrifices, 
hoping such hopes, and dreaming such dreams for 
their boy. He could come nearer voicing that yearn- 
ing and standing In the parents' stead than any teach- 
er It has ever been my fortune to meet. 

I know that, as to the little successes which have 
come to me since college days, I have felt the same 
desire to go back to Dr. Carlisle and carry the little 
trophies I have won and lay them at his feet as a 
tribute to what he has done for me and hoped for me 
that I have felt in taking them back to my mother. 

Dr. Carlisle differed from other educators in one 
great respect: he never seemed to desire that we 
should at any cost become scholars, but that at any 
cost we should do our duty and meet the obligations 
that came to us as men. Then If scholarship was 
the result, well and good; but if not, there were 
to be no regrets, provided we had faithfully, hon- 
estly, and to the fullest possible extent met the ob- 
ligations of student life. 

His respect for the honest, plodding mediocre was 
as profound and real as for the most brilliant stu- 
dent, provided both did their duty. 



Tributes to Dr. Carlisle. 153 

He never flattered the brilliant one, nor did he 
patronize the unfortunate one. To him both were 
men made in the Image of God, fitted Into the 
scheme, of life by a grander and diviner than hu- 
man force; and both were to be respected, each in 
his sphere of life. 

The success of Wofford College as a place of 
education is due largely to the fact that contact with 
this great man was an education in Itself, a living 
illustration of all that proper education stands for. 

It is Idle to speak of filling his place. No old 
student of his will ever expect it to be filled any 
more than he expects the place of his dead mother 
to be filled. His spirit will exert Its great Influence 
over Wofford and her children as long as men as- 
pire to attain to all that is best and purest In life. 



FROM CHANCELLOR KIRKLAND. 



In the death of Dr. Carlisle, South Carolina has 
lost its greatest citizen. He was a man without a 
peer, great in Intellectual attainments and greater 
still in character. His Influence over the students 
of Wofford College was the great factor In the his- 
tory of that Institution for thirty years after the 
Civil War. The college had little endowment and 
no equipment, but it had Dr. Carlisle. To know 
him, to partake of his spirit, to enter Into the high 
places of his thought, to share his ideals, to feel the 
largeness of his sympathy and the sincerity of his 



154 Carlisle Memorial Volume. 

Christian character was an education in itself. His 
life was a perpetual call to high things. His pupils 
of olden days will cherish his memory as they cher- 
ish virtue, knowledge, and truth. In the best that 
they do he will ever be present. Through them he 
yet speaks in multiplied form and place. 



BY W. G. BLAKE. 

They say he's dead! Prone lies the noble form — 
The form that cold, material nature set 
Her stamp of honor on to laud herself. 
They say he's deadl The great, the gentle heart 
Is still — the heart that was as deep as love 
And broad as all humanity. The brain, 
The mighty brain that wisdom did reflect 
Straight from the throne of Truth ; the ready lips 
That lent their willing service to the brain; 
The hands that knew no resting from God's work- 
All, all are cold, so cold and still! And now 
They say he's dead ! Ah ! no, no, no ! Not dead. 
Unless sweet spring be dead when winter reigns, 
Or glorious day be dead when evening falls. 
Or music's soul be dead when mute the strings, 
And slumber folds awhile the player's hands. 
Yon constant sun that proudly rules the heaven 
And breeds a myriad life through land and sea — 
Yon sun, which is Hfe's life, may pale, may die. 
And hang a blackened cinder in his place. 
But that which tabernacled in this clay 
Is lord of death ! The som.ething that was here — 
That emanation rare that fashions men, 
Enriches earth, and peoples heaven — dies not. 
Aye, verily, 'tis that whereof is made 
Bright immortality and walks adown 
The shining arcades of eternity 
Hand-clasped with God ! 



Tributes to Dr. Carlisle. 155 

FROM J. J. m'SWAIN. 

Permit a word from one who was not privileged 
to be a student under Dr. Carlisle to add one word 
of testimony to his true greatness, to make the par- 
tial estimate of the onlooker. It was simply marvel- 
ous to see the veneration — ^yea, reverence — in which 
his very name was held in audiences few of whom 
had ever seen him. It is notable how seldom Dr. 
Carlisle spoke in public and how conservative and 
guarded were all his utterances. Consider again 
how little he wrote and how little of "startling orig- 
inality" there was in his contribution to the press. 
Then why this universal love and respect for one 
whom they had never seen, never heard, and after 
whom they had seldom, if ever, read? I think it 
must have been with others, as it was with me, that 
the belief prevailed that in Dr. Carlisle the elements 
were so mixed that all the world might stand up and 
say: "Here is a man." In his self-mastery, In his 
unselfishness, in his self-surrender for an ideal, in 
his patient, consistent faith that the best in a boy 
would finally triumph, in the loving solicitude with 
which he followed each individual who had been un- 
der him — for all these and more Dr. Carlisle kept 
unconsciously pressing upon the attention of the 
even unattentlve people that he possessed and mani- 
fested something of that divine nature after which 
his life was modeled. Though by more than half 
a century of service Dr. Carlisle was the especial 
possession of Wofford College, yet by his life and 



156 Carlisle Memorial Volume. 

living and by his death and memory he becomes the 
property of all the people of the State. 



FROM PRESIDENT S. C. MITCHELL. 



It was an impressive sight to witness the tribute 
which the people of South Carolina paid Dr. James 
H. Carlisle. The fact that they singled out such a 
man as the chief object of their affection and admi- 
ration bespeaks the nobility of the soul of the peo- 
ple of this State. The vast concourse of people 
gathered on the campus of Wofford College around 
that bier represented all the different religious de- 
nominations, all factions In politics, all sections of 
the State and classes of people, without regard to 
wealth or social distinction ; and yet that great com- 
pany were united in their feelings of reverence and 
gratitude for the moral power exhibited by that 
simple teacher who for threescore years had lived 
among them. Essentially strong at heart is any 
nation that retains so clear a vision as to things In 
life that are really worth while. The greatness of 
Dr. Carlisle was singularly clear-cut. It was not 
due to wealth nor to social distinction nor to official 
eminence nor to creative scholarship. His greatness 
was due to the sheer force of personality and moral 
power. I do not know of any Instance that reveals 
so clearly the projectional force of character stripped 
of all adventitious things. 

Citizen after citizen in Spartanburg told me how 



Tributes to Dr. Carlisle. 157 

influential Dr. Carlisle had been in materially build- 
ing up that city, in imparting the impulse to prog- 
ress, in promoting industries, in developing the 
spirit of cooperation and enterprise, in setting high 
business ideals. This alone was a signal achieve- 
ment, for the expansive energies in Spartanburg 
command the attention of every thoughtful man. 
It is becoming a hive of industry and a center of 
wealth and influence. And yet it is to be noted that 
the man who is regarded as in some measure re- 
sponsible for this progress remained poor and 
scorned mammon. He loved progress, but his mind 
never became materialized. He kept it clearly in 
view that material development is good only so far 
as it ministers to the health, intellectual prowess, 
and moral sanity of all the people. 

Wofford College is the monument of Dr. Carlisle. 
The spirit of service which he showed throughout 
his long career throbs in this noble institution. I 
have long felt that I could tell, as by an earmark, the 
men whom the famous Gessner Harrison, of the 
University of Virginia, trained — men like the late 
Bishop Dudley, of Kentucky, William Wert Henry, 
John A. Broadus, Col. Archer Anderson, of Vir- 
ginia, and Dr. E. S. Joynes. All of these men were 
characterized by a moderation in expression, a just- 
ness of thought, a nice sense of proportion that 
reminds one of the full-orbed culture of the Greeks. 
So with the men of Wofford. Wherever I meet 



158 Carlisle Memorial Volume. 

them I discover in them a rich human sympathy and 
breadth of view and, above all, the spirit of social 
service. 

The labors of Dr. Carlisle, however, in the cause 
of education were not confined to one institution. 
His personality gave strength to every school in the 
State and imparted dignity to the humble calling of 
the teacher. The end of education is character, and 
his career furnished a splendid example of charac- 
ter in the beauty of its growth and in its subtle effect 
on the youth of the commonwealth. He was more 
than a mere teacher in a college ; he was an exemplar 
of civic righteousness. The State has invested in 
the University of South Carolina since its founda- 
tion in 1805 about two million dollars. If the sole 
product of that investment had been Dr. James H. 
Carlisle alone, the State would, in my opinion, be 
amply repaid for every penny that it has expended 
for this institution. South Carolina has lost a fore- 
most citizen and the university its most illustrious 
alumnus. 



FROM GOVERNOR ANSEL. 

All South Carolina mourns at the death of one of 
her best and most honored citizens. Dr. James H. 
Carlisle has been called to his reward. His name 
and memory will ever be cherished and loved. He 
was foremost in all good works and the leader of 
education in this State for many years. 



Tributes to Dr. Carlisle. 159 

FROM HON. SAMUEL DIBBLE, THE FIRST GRADUATE OF WOFFORD. 

Dr. Carlisle's pupils honor him as a great pre- 
ceptor, realize the salutary influence of his life and 
teaching upon their own lives, and loved him with 
the affection of children to a parent. Dr. CarHsle 
and Wade Hampton I consider the greatest South 
Carolinians I have ever met — the one a moral and 
intellectual trainer of young men whose record is 
equal to that of Socrates, the other a leader of his 
people in war and peace, both of them exemplars of 
the highest types of devotion to lofty interests and 
high ideals. Each in his sphere contributed more 
than any other to the rehabilitation of a prostrate 
State and were the heroes facile princeps of their 
generation In South Carolina. 



FROM ARTHUR W. PAGE, IN WORLD's WORK, JUNE, I907. 

For the last fifty years the dominant figure at 
Wofford College has been Dr. James H. Carlisle, 
Without either money or political power, this old 
man, by the strength of his character, has kept edu- 
cation in its broadest sense alive even in the ex- 
treme poverty of the people just after the war and 
has saved it from being swamped by the successful 
commercialism of the present time. I heard one 
man ask another what he had studied under Dr. 
Carlisle. "Astronomy," was the answer. "Did 
you learn anything?" the first one asked. "Yes," 
answered the other ; "I learned to be a man." There 



i6o Carlisle Memorial Volume. 

is no commercial standard in which the influence of 
Dr. Carlisle and Wofford College can be measured. 



FROM RION m'kiSSICK. 

How clearly I recall one winter night when in 
my room at Harvard I read of the visit of President 
Eliot to Spartanburg and of the striking scene pre- 
sented when he and Dr. Carlisle greeted each other ! 
Yet a thought struck me then, as now, that, though 
they were parallel in many things, in the larger 
sense of personal influence Dr. Carlisle's work shone 
luminous far above that of the New England schol- 
ar. In the upbuilding of human character and in 
genuine helpfulness to his fellow men the lovable 
teacher who lived out there in the quiet and peace 
of Wofford was a mightier man than Eliot, sur- 
rounded by the power and wealth of the greatest 
American unlversitv. 

Men may come and men may go to Harvard ; but 
to them President Eliot was almost unknown, and 
but few of them ever exchanged a word with him. 
Nobody thought of going to him for advice except 
the graduate students, who at best were far removed 
from the world. Eliot was a great, cold figure liv- 
ing in a house that none thought of entering. How 
different with Dr. Carlisle and his house, where no 
student needed an open sesame to admit him ! Out 
of it came men better than when they went in, and 
the sum total of the influence of that kindlv and 



Tributes to Dr. Carlisle. i6i 

helpful man of God no one could dare to estimate. 
True now the saying: "Ulysses is gone, and there is 
none left in Ithica that can bend his bow." 



FROM CHARLES PETTY. 



In speaking of Dr. Carlisle any one who has 
known him well and who has come under his influ- 
ence might use many adjectives in his praise and not 
exceed the bounds of truth. But it is certain that if 
he had dictated any notices of his life and work 
there would have been few adjectives. While he 
appreciated the good opinion of his friends, he never 
courted outspoken praise. He was always humiliat- 
ed when indiscreet speakers referred to him, espe- 
cially when he was present. He was a modest, hum- 
ble, strong, faithful man. He did not seek his own. 
He never took any delight in the applause of the 
crowd. He preferred silent, thoughtful, earnest 
attention to the words he spoke. He never consid- 
ered that he had made or could make a big speech. 

As a teacher he differed from all under whose in- 
fluence it was my privilege to come. Some of the 
drummers who are pushing special goods have what 
they call "side lines" — that is, in the leisure hours 
in a town they take orders aside from their regular 
business. Dr. Carlisle had many side lines in teach- 
ing. A wise reader can get as much by reading be- 
tv/een the lines of a good book as he gets from the 
text. The student got more out of the lesson he 
II 



1 62 Carlisle Memorial Volume. 

taught than the author of the textbook ever dreamed 
of putting in. 

He was the most silent teacher it was ever our 
privilege to be under. Some young teachers, and 
olders ones too, talk themselves out of breath and 
talk the classes out of all patience. Dr. Carlisle 
spoke few words during a recitation. When a stu- 
dent made a flat failure, his silence and expression 
of pity were Infinitely worse than an open rebuke. 
His aim was not to get mathematics into the stu- 
dent's mind, but to get manhood, virile effort, and 
a laudable ambition into him. He never played the 
detective, but he could tell from the appearance of 
a student or the manner in which he recited whether 
he was walking surely and uprightly or not. He 
never made any pointed references to any one's 
misconduct before the class, but he had a way of 
inviting a young man to call at his study at a certain 
hour. No one ever knew what was said in those 
interviews unless the students told, and they were 
not apt to do so. He had another way of maintain- 
ing the highest discipline. Sometimes he would say 
to a student: "I should like to see you after recita- 
tion a few minutes." When they were alone, he 
would say about these words : "Two of your friends 
are falling behind In their work. You have some 
influence with them. See what you can do to help 
them." In that way he endeavored to reach out and 
keep a strong grip on every boy in college. 

Never did any one, however he might neglect his 



Tributes to Dr. Carlisle. 163 

studies, come under his influence without being ben- 
efited. Several years ago a man with much busi- 
ness on hand said: "I was at Wofford only a short 
time and did not behave well nor hurt myself at 
study; but if I am worth anything to-day, I am 
greatly indebted to Dr. Carlisle for the good influ- 
ence he had on me." 

His teaching extended far beyond the college cam- 
pus. He was always ready by public lecture or with 
pen to give the public the knowledge he possessed. 
He would go out to a country schoolhouse or a 
church and make a talk that would never be forgot- 
ten. A few years ago he handed the writer a letter 
written to him by a lady in the country. She stated 
that at a certain place he had made a speech when 
she was a young woman. It was so helpful and in- 
spiring to her that she would like for him to repro- 
duce it, because her children were growing up, and 
she wanted his very words for them. The Doctor 
had forgotten making the talk. He possessed in an 
eminent degree that high virtue of forgetting a kind- 
ness when he had conferred it on others. It has 
been my privilege to hear him talk to large crowds 
and to small audiences in the country, and I verily 
believe that his best talks were made to plain country 
people. That is a rare faculty possessed by few 
public speakers. 

Above all men I have known, he had the power 
of inspiring thought in others. He was not a gen- 
ius, nor was he a scholar in the technical meaning of 



164 Carlisle Memorial Volume. 

that word; but he was more than a genius and a 
scholar. In a wonderful way he could appropriate 
the thought and suggestions of others and by a proc- 
ess of his own mold them over, reshape them, and 
present them in a new and forcible way. In his talks 
he came up to the celebrated John Foster's standard 
of a public speaker, who said that he did not want a 
speaker after the manner of an auctioneer who 
would sell thread from a spool a yard at a time in- 
stead of throwing out the whole spool and saying, 
"Here, take this," and then throw out others in 
quick succession. Dr. Carlisle never imwound his 
spools, but threw them out rapidly one after an- 
other and often so rapidly that the untrained hearer 
could not catch them all. 

In all this half century here there Is not a man or 
woman, white or black, who has not come more or 
less under his Influence. There was no child too 
small or too poor or too humble to be unnoticed by 
him. Years ago a little, dirty, half-clothed, bare- 
footed boy went into a printing office for work. He 
was given a place. By degrees he worked away, 
and he is now proprietor of a job printing office. 
He has a home, an Interesting family, and a bright 
outlook. He once said to the writer about these 
words and more : "You remember when I first went 
to your office. I was hungry, for times were hard 
at our home. But well do I remember Dr. Carlisle 
often coming in to see you; and he would put his 
hand gently on my dirty head and say: 'How is my 



Tributes to Dr. Carlisle. 165 

little Benjamin Franklin to-day?' His kind words 
and recognition have done me much good, and his 
interest in me helped to make me what I am. I 
owe him much." Hundreds of such stories could be 
published. 

To know Dr. Carlisle in his private life was a 
liberal education. He was the most gentle man. 
He had the highest regard for other people's opin- 
ions. He never had words of abuse for another 
man's religion or politics. When others were trou- 
bled in mind about the public utterances of those 
who attacked Christianity, he was not moved. The 
so-called "new thought" gave him no trouble. He 
never in his public talks, or private ones either, 
made any reference to the religious side of his life. 
He just simply lived religion every day. The per- 
sonal equation in religion he kept hidden in his own 
breast, as all true Christians do. He was never a 
shining light in class meeting. He was modest, rev- 
erent, thoughtful, earnest, without any display of 
emotions. One peculiarity in his private talks or 
public addresses was that he seldom mentioned any 
of the names of Deity. So great was his reverence 
that he avoided doing that as much as he possibly 
could. 

Of course we all feel that "we shall never look 
upon his like again" ; but his Influence, his example, 
and the memory of his good and pure life are our 
rich heritage. 



1 66 Carlisle Memorial Volume. 

FROM T. B. THACKSTCN. 

A patriarch in Israel has fallen asleep; and we 
shall not see his like again, at least not in this gen- 
eration. Surely the older ones of us who came un- 
der the magic spell of his influence in years agone 
will not permit the record of his unselfish life to be 
forgotten by the youth of the land. Here is a sug- 
gestion: Let those of us who as students were so 
fortunate as to sit and learn at the feet of this mod- 
ern Gamaliel, as well as those who were privileged 
to listen to his public addresses and who can now 
recall the matchless words of wisdom that fell from 
his lips — let us, one and all, run back over the pages 
of memory and embody in communications to the 
county papers the imxpressive incidents and the spe- 
cific utterances that then thrilled and moved us to 
higher ideals and to nobler living. Let his words 
and his works be handed down from sire to son 
through the cycles of the ages yet to be. Truly no 
one individual can write the full and complete biog- 
raphy of Dr. James H. Carlisle; but each and all of 
us, by contributing a little here and there, may pre- 
sent a faint portraiture of his true personality and 
may thus help to disclose the secret of his great 
power in molding and fashioning the lives and char- 
acters of the young men of South Carolina. 



FROM P. H. FIKE. 

From young manhood to far beyond the allot- 
ted time of man, James H. Carlisle unselfishly 



Tributes to Dr. Carlisle. 167 

poured out the stainless, unsullied life of a full- 
grown man for the betterment of the young men 
who have stood under the sound of his voice and 
listened at his feet to the words of wisdom and 
encouragement and practical help and suggestion. 
In talking to men to-day who have been fortunate 
in having had the benefit of his instructions — and 
many of them measure up to a success in the control 
of commercial, financial, industrial, and professional 
pursuits in this modern town — all agree that the 
great "heart power" was that preeminent charac- 
teristic of this wonderfully great man. Some term 
it by another name, but "heart power" best expresses 
it. Of great physical stature and gigantic mental 
proportions, Dr. Carlisle was endowed with an 
acute, analytical mind, for the development of which 
he spared no opportunity of energy in securing his 
education at the State University under such a co- 
terie of teachers as Lieber, Henry, and Thornwell, 
whose very names suggest letters. 

Only those who have occupied the position of 
student to this remarkable man can appreciate the 
timidity and reverence with which his name or life 
work is mentioned. When all is said or done, it is 
the personal equation that outweighs all else in any 
estimate of results or character. No teacher ever 
possessed the personality of Dr. Carlisle. To see the 
man and be thrown with him once, one would feel 
that a mean, low, vicious thought was foreign to 
him. He was firm of manner and tone in the reci- 



1 68 Carlisle Memorial Volume. 

tation room, but approachable to a degree that made 
him worshiped by his students. 

And the fifty-five years of service to Wofford 
quickened and Invigorated his Intellectual powers 
and broadened his work. With the coming and 
going of the classes there was no fatigue or wearing 
away; and, stranger still, the kindly Interest of the 
man followed his students far beyond the college 
walls and Into their pursuits of life. He never dis- 
missed interest In a student when the latter parted 
from the college campus for good, and hundreds 
to-day likely have letters of help and comfort and 
encouragement that have found their way to them 
years after their college days. 

Would a personal Incident be in good taste ? Ten 
or twelve years after my college days at Wofford 
the paper on which I was employed changed owner- 
ship. It was In the midsummer time. All the help 
on the "sheet" were at sea, so far as knowing wheth- 
er they would be retained or not. The new pro- 
prietor called me In one sultry evening and said: 
"You ought to feel highly honored. Dr. Carlisle 
walked down to my ofiice from Wofford campus 
this hot afternoon and requested me to retain you 
in your present position on the paper." It is need- 
less to add that I was far more surprised than the 
owner of the paper. This merely shows the great 
heart power of the man. 

When a student I have often wondered at the 
great magnetism he exerted in the classrooms. 



Tributes to Dr. Carlisle. 169 

What man Is there in this country who was at Wof- 
f ord in the early nineties but recalls that little poem 
Dr. Carlisle recited as he only could give expression, 
"The Bird with the Broken Wing" ? This verse the 
Doctor would recite ever and anon; and some of the 
hearers committed it to memory under his dictation, 
prompted solely by the power and expression of the 
teacher. The verse is: 

"I walked in the woodland meadow, 

Where sweet the thrushes sing, 
And found on a bed of mosses 

A bird with a broken wing. 
I healed its wing, and each morning 

It sang in the old sweet strain; 
But the bird with a broken pinion 

Never soared so high again. 

I saw a young life ruined 

By sin's seductive art; 
And, touched with a Christlike pity, 

I took him to my heart 
He lived with a noble purpose. 

And his striving was not in vain; 
But the soul that sin had stricken 

Never soared so high again. 

But the bird with a broken pinion 

Kept another from the snare, 
And the life that sin had stricken 

Raised another from despair. 
Each loss has its compensation. 

There is healing for every pdn; 
But the bird with a broken pinion 

Never soared so high again." 
12 



170 Carlisle Memorial Volume. 

This little verse, pointing a great moral lesson, quot- 
ed by the master teacher, remained indelibly on the 
hearts of his hearers, many of them carrying it 
through the long and changing years. I have heard 
some old Wofford men, twelve years and more after 
hearing the Doctor repeat it, say that when, in some 
environment of temptation, that pen picture and Dr. 
Carlisle's clear, wonderful interpretation of the lines 
brought them to thinking seriously. That's what 
you call the personal equation, isn't it? 

A prominent gentleman of Union County, not a 
Wofford man, a number of years ago related an 
interesting incident showing clearly the character of 
the Doctor. On a visit to a home at which the nar- 
rator resided Dr. Carlisle was waiting for the car- 
riage to take a ride. This carriage was driven by 
an old-time negro named Peter. Peter had been 
coachman in the family for forty years, and his 
great age was visibly asserting itself. While the 
members of the family were busy preparing to start, 
Dr. Carlisle walked out to the street and began talk- 
ing to Peter. The coachman told him how long he 
had been driving the horses. Dr. Carlisle then said: 
"Well, Peter, you are getting old now. Are you 
sure you are driving your horses to the right coun- 
try?'* With this simple, homely entering wedge, the 
great man of letters clearly evidenced that he let 
no opportunity slip on any occasion to do good, to 
help people, to make them think and do, no matter 
how humble or exalted. The man who related this 



Tributes to Dr. Carlisle. 171 

incident said: "That was twenty years ago; but it 
put me to thinking, and I feel that it made of me a 
better man." 

"Fame is no plant, that grows on mortal soil, 
Nor in the glistening foil 
Set off to the world, nor in broad rumor lies ; 
But lives and spreads aloft by those pure eyes 
And perfect witness of all-judging Jove, 
As He pronounces lastly on each deed 
Of so much fame in heaven expect the meed." 



